(LifeSiteNews) — A top Palestinian reporter for Al-Jazeera and five other journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday in Gaza City.
Anas al-Sharif, the most visible reporter in Gaza, was buried Monday along with four other Al Jazeera journalists — Mohammed Qreiqah, Ibrahim Zahir, Mo’men Alouwa, and Mohammed Noufal as well as Sahat journalist Mohammed Al-Khalidi. Their deaths now bring the number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza to 238, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
The funeral of the 6 journalists deliberately targeted and assassinated by Israel:
Journalist Anas Al-Sharif.
Journalist Mohammed Qreiqah.
Journalist Ibrahim Zahir.
Journalist Mo’men Alouwa.
Journalist Mohammed Noufal.
Journalist Mohammed Al-Khalidi pic.twitter.com/TrNIWB4mVR
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) August 11, 2025
About an hour before he was struck dead, al-Sharif warned, “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop. Silence is complicity.”
The Al-Jazeera reporter has been continuously helping to expose the devastation, death, and suffering in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s onslaught in the region through his reports on live television and online.
He covered Israel’s 2024 airstrike killing his colleagues, including prominent Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi. Al-Sharif’s father was killed in December 2023 during an Israeli strike on his family home.
The daring journalist, a Muslim, leaves behind a daughter, Sham, a son, Salah, and his wife, Umm Salah. He left a will and final message in which he urged listeners not to forget Gaza. “And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance,” he concluded.
The Israeli military admitted to targeting al-Sharif, claiming he was the “head of a terrorist cell in Hamas.” Al-Sharif himself and Al-Jazeera have emphatically denied this allegation, and al-Sharif can reportedly be heard criticizing Hamas in social media posts.
International observers and groups such as the pro-media freedom Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have rejected the allegations. RSF has called them “baseless.”
“Without strong action from the international community to stop the Israeli army … we’re likely to witness more such extrajudicial murders of media professionals,” RSF said, according to the BBC.
The UN’s human rights office denounced Israel’s Sunday attack on journalists as a serious violation of international law.
Fellow Palestinian journalist Kamer Labad believes this most recent slaughter of reporters in Gaza by the Israeli military is meant to intimidate other journalists in the region into silence, so that the horrors of the remainder of Israel’s onslaught are not shown to the world.
“We fear that this could be a prelude to massacres in Gaza City, especially after the occupation’s threat to completely occupy the Gaza Strip and completely destroy Gaza City in particular,” Labad, a reporter for Al-Aqsa TV, told Drop Site on Monday. “They do not want these pictures to be broadcast, and it’s also a clear threat to other journalists not to convey the voices of Gaza to the outside world.”
Two special UN rapporteurs described the killings as “an attempt to silence reporting on the ongoing genocide and starvation campaign” in Gaza.
“It is outrageous that the Israeli army dares to first launch a campaign to smear Anas Al-Sharif as Hamas in order to discredit his reporting and then kill him and his colleagues for speaking the truth to the world,” the experts said, demanding both an investigation into the journalists’ deaths and free access by international media to Gaza.
This latest hit on Palestinian journalists has triggered anger and protests around the world from Tunisia to Ireland and Sweden to Washington, D.C., Al Jazeera reported.
While Israel initially claimed the deaths of Palestinian journalists were simply collateral damage, they eventually admitted to targeting journalists, but under the pretext that they were militants. In October 2024, Israel placed six Al Jazeera journalists on a hit list, including Al-Sharif. Drop Site contributor Hossam Shabbat, who was named on the list, was assassinated in March by the Israeli military’s own admission.
Al-Sharif had been directly threatened by the Israeli military since at least November 2023, when he said he was called by Israeli army officers who told him to stop reporting on Israel’s violence and to leave northern Gaza. About three weeks afterward, as he refused to stop covering the devastation in Gaza, his family home was bombed, killing his 90-year-old father. “The threats only escalated from there, with the Israeli military spokesperson posting videos taunting him online,” Drop Site News shared.
Al-Sharif referred to Israel’s threats as a policy of “Silence or Death,” and he not only refused to be silenced — he urged others to speak out about the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
