In the early hours of Friday, three journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike as they slept in a media complex in southern Lebanon, an attack that Lebanese government officials have condemned as a war crime.
The network said those killed were cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda, both of whom worked for the pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian Lebanese television station al-Mayadeen. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that cameraman Wissam Qasim was also killed in the airstrike.
Local media broadcast live from the scene in Hasbaya, showing several bungalows reduced to rubble and several crumpled cars with the word “PRESS” written on them.
The attack is the latest sign that Israel is expanding its targeting in Lebanon beyond Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, attacking not only local government buildings but also relief workers, financial institutions, and journalists.
Israel stepped up attacks against Hezbollah in September, initially saying the goal was to push Hezbollah back from the Lebanese border to ensure the return of some 60,000 people forced from their homes in northern Israel by rocket attacks. Ta.
However, after killing much of Hezbollah’s leadership, Israel appears to have expanded its targets, launching airstrikes across the country and invading the south.
The religiously mixed Hasbaya area had been largely spared from Israeli airstrikes, so journalists covering the fighting moved to the area, away from the front lines.
Three people were injured in the attack, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said.
“This is a war crime,” Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary said, adding that there were 18 journalists from seven different news organizations at the compound. These include Lebanese broadcasters, as well as Sky News Arabia and Al Jazeera.
“Occupational [Israel’s] The targeting of journalists’ residences was intentional,” Al Mayadeen director Ghassan bin Jid said on the channel’s X account.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
The airstrikes followed reports of another 24 hours of heavy airstrikes and shelling across Lebanon, killing 19 people in 24 hours, raising the death toll to nearly 2,600 since October 2023. , most of which were from the past four weeks. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people and created a humanitarian crisis.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had attacked “approximately 200 terrorist targets” in southern Lebanon over the past day, killing the local commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit.
Israel also said 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, bringing the death toll on the Israeli side to 27 since the IDF invaded its northern neighbor. More than 80 Israeli military personnel and civilians have been killed in ground incursions into northern Israel and southern Lebanon over the past year.
Israel has been criticized for attacking hospitals, schools, Lebanese soldiers who are not party to the conflict, and even UN peacekeepers. But it said its attacks targeted Hezbollah militants and military infrastructure, and accused the militants of using civilians as human shields.
On Thursday, three Lebanese soldiers were killed in an Israeli airstrike while trying to evacuate injured people from the border village of Yeter, the military said. Israel did not comment on the attack.
Friday’s attack came a day after one of al-Mayadeen’s offices in a six-story residential building in southern Beirut was attacked by Israeli forces. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, one person was killed and five others were injured in the airstrike.
Five journalists have been killed in fighting in Lebanon over the past year, including two Al-Mayadeen journalists killed in southern Lebanon in November.
The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip also resulted in many casualties. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed in the enclave since the conflict began, most of them Palestinians, and that CPJ has had the largest number of deaths for journalists since it began collecting data in 1992. He said it was the most deadly period.
Earlier this week, Israel accused six Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza of belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents seized in Gaza. This is the latest accusation in an ongoing feud with the Qatari-backed network.
Al Jazeera strongly denied this claim, saying it was based on “fabricated evidence”.
CPJ said Israel “repeated similar unproven claims without presenting any credible evidence.”
The newspaper cited the example of an Al-Jazeera correspondent killed by Israel in Gaza in July, and later published documents in 2007 alleging that the correspondent had earned a military rank in Hamas when he was 10 years old. Created.
Also on Friday, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon said they were forced to withdraw from an observation post earlier this week after Israeli Defense Force soldiers who had been seen conducting the operation “fired at the observation post.” .
Unifil has accused the IDF of attacking positions and injuring its troops in more than a dozen incidents since the start of Israel’s ground invasion.
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
Cartographer: Stephen Barnard
