Intl desk, Dec 16: Israeli forces killed at least 69 people in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including in four attacks targeting schools where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, medics say.
The victims included Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Al-Louh, two other Palestinian journalists and five members of the Palestinian Civil Defence.
Israel’s government also announced plans to double the population of Israeli settlers in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights after its military seized land in the territory following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 44,976 Palestinians and wounded 106,759 since October 7, 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), says Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalists is part of a “systematic attempt” to “censor information coming out” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“We are reliant on [Palestinian journalists] for all the information we’re getting out about what’s happening inside Gaza,” Ginsberg said, noting that Al Jazeera is “one of the only international news organisations with staff still in Gaza”.
She said the CPJ, which has been documenting the killing of dozens of media workers in Gaza, believes that Israel had deliberately targeted “a number of journalists” in the Palestinian enclave.
That would make the killings a “war crime”, she added.
Source: Al Jazeera