Gaza health officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 11 people, including two children and an Al Jazeera cameraman, in the latest violence to rock the Palestinian territory despite a ceasefire.
The Qatar-based news network said its cameraman Ahmed Wishah was killed on Saturday, local time, in an “Israeli bombardment” that targeted a house in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera condemned what it called a “deliberate killing” and said it comes only two months after Wishah’s brother Mohammed Wishah, also a correspondent for the news network, was killed by Israeli forces.
“Ahmed is the 12th Al Jazeera martyr in Gaza since October 2023,” it said in a statement.
Ahmed Wishah’s brother Mohammed Wishah, who also worked for Al Jazeera, was killed by Israeli shelling in April. (Supplied: Al Jazeera)
“The Network denounces the continuation of these crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against its correspondents and staff in Gaza, and renews its call on the international community and legal institutions to take urgent, practical measures to hold the Israeli officials involved in these appalling crimes accountable, and to adopt deterrent mechanisms to end the targeting of journalists.”
An Israeli military spokesman confirmed to AFP it “carried out a strike on Ahmed Wishah”, who he called “a Hamas terrorist”.
The spokesman did not immediately provide evidence to support the military’s claim about Wishah, but said “there will be a statement issued with further details”.
At the time of Mohammed Wishah’s death, media rights group Reporters Without Borders said Israeli forces had killed more than 220 journalists, at least 70 of whom were killed in the context of their professional duties.
The Israeli army has repeatedly said it never deliberately targets journalists.
But since October 2023, it has claimed to have killed a number of people who it says were Palestinian militant “terrorists” working under the guise of being media professionals.
Gaza health officials say Israeli strikes kill 11
Israel’s strikes on Saturday killed at least 11 people, Gaza health officials said, including four members of the same family.
An overnight air strike on an apartment building in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed four members of the Al-Safadi family, including the husband, wife and their two daughters, according to the civil defence agency, a rescue service that operates under Hamas authority.
It said the strike also injured 12 others.
Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of four members of the Safadi family, including four-year-old Zina and 14-year-old Lana.
Mourners carry the bodies of two Palestinian girls in an Israeli air strike that damaged their home. (AP: Abdel Kareem Hana)
“Around 2 o’clock, my cousins were asleep when a missile struck them. They have no connection to Hamas, nor are they involved in anything. They’re just innocent children,” said Nael al-Safadi, a relative.
AFP footage from the scene showed an exterior wall of the apartment blown off, exposing rubble, clothes, mattresses and other household belongings strewn across the shattered interior.
“By God, I still feel as though I’m in a dream — I never expected this to happen to us,” Mohammad al-Safadi, who survived the strike, told AFP.
“I’m a civilian. I swear to God I’ve never carried a weapon or fired one. What do you want from me? Go after whoever you’re after, what’s my fault in this?“
Al-Shifa hospital, meanwhile, said it had received one body following a separate Israeli drone strike near an intersection in the north of Gaza City.
Later on Saturday, six more people were killed in separate Israeli attacks, including three when an Israeli aircraft targeted a house in the Bureij refugee camp, the civil defence agency reported.
It said the three killed included Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Wishah.
At least 1,012 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect on October 10 last year, according to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
The Israeli army has reported five deaths in its ranks during the same period.
Restrictions imposed on media outlets and limited access in Gaza prevent news organisations, including the ABC, from independently verifying tolls or freely covering the violence there.
AFP/ABC
