31, Including Five Journalists, Killed In Gaza


(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Gaza authorities said an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian journalists in a vehicle outside a hospital on Thursday.

Medics said the five were among at least 31 people killed in Israeli air assaults across the Palestinian enclave before dawn.

The Palestinian Journalists Union said one strike killed five journalists from the Al-Quds Today channel who were in a broadcast vehicle in front of Al-Awda Hospital in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The union said more than 190 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire since the war began in October 2023.

The Gaza-based channel called the strike a massacre and said in a statement on Telegram the five "were killed as they carried out their media and humanitarian duty".

Later Thursday, health officials said five medical staff, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in the northern edge of Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have operated since October.

The officials there said they had resisted army orders to evacuate the hospital since the new ground offensive began nearly three months ago.

Video from the scene of thursday's attack showed the twisted wreckage of a white van with what appeared to be the remnants of the word "PRESS" in red on the back doors.

Dozens of relatives and fellow journalists took part in the funerals of the five journalists, whose bodies were wrapped in white shrouds. Blue flak jackets bearing the word "PRESS" were placed on top of the shrouded bodies.

In its end-of-year report, the Reporters Without Borders organisation said Gaza was the world's most dangerous region for journalists due to killings by the Israeli army.

Medics in the enclave said 13 other people were killed and 25 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood.

In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on a house in the suburb of Sabra killed eight more people, medics said, bringing Thursday's death toll to 31.

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Gulf Times

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