By Quds News Network
Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 260 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza. The most recent victims were three journalists who were on assignment with the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief on a “humanitarian, journalistic mission.”
On Wednesday, three photojournalists, Anas Ghunaim, Abdul Ra’ouf Shaath and Mohammad Qeshta, were killed when the Israeli military struck their vehicle. The three were working for the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief, which supervises Egypt’s relief work in Gaza.
They were documenting developments on the ground using a drone in central Gaza when they were hit in an Israeli strike. Video footage circulating online showed their charred, bombed-out vehicle by the roadside, smoke still rising from the wreckage.
Mohammed Mansour, the committee’s spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency that the journalists were filming a newly established displacement camp. He said the strike occurred about 5km (3 miles) from Israeli-controlled territory and that the vehicle was known to the Israeli military as belonging to the Egyptian committee.
The Israeli military claimed they were operating a drone to gather intelligence on Israeli soldiers, while witnesses said the vehicle was entirely civilian.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office on Wednesday, their killing raises the death toll of journalists killed in the Gaza genocide to 260.
In response to the attack, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) said on Thursday the three photojournalists were travelling in a vehicle “while carrying out a humanitarian, journalistic mission to film and document the suffering of civilians”.
The head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said the Gaza Strip is “witnessing the largest massacre of journalists in history.”
Reporters Without Borders said in its World Press Freedom Index 2025 that Palestine has become the world’s most dangerous state for journalists amid the Israeli war.
“Trapped in the enclave, journalists in Gaza have no shelter and lack everything, including food and water,” said the Paris-based group, which is also known by its French acronym RSF.
“In the West Bank, journalists are routinely harassed and attacked by both settlers and Israeli forces, but repression reached new heights with a wave of arrests after 7 October, when impunity for crimes committed against journalists became a new rule.”
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has been considered the deadliest for journalists and media workers in the world in 30 years.
The Gaza Media Office said that Israel targeted journalists “in an attempt to suppress the Palestinian narrative and erase the truth. However, the occupation failed to break the will of our great people.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza has been the “worst ever conflict” for journalists, according to a recent report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
The report, titled News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World, said the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip had “killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
“In 2023, a journalist or media worker was, on average, killed or murdered every four days. In 2024, it was once every three days,” said the report.
“Most reporters harmed or killed, as is the case in Gaza, are local journalists.”
The Center for Protecting Palestinian Journalists (PJPS) said that the killing of journalists is part of a series of human rights violations committed by the Israeli occupation.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) chief Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement, “The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger.”
The advocacy group also accused Israel of attempting to stifle investigations into the killings, shift blame onto journalists for their own deaths, and ignoring its duty to hold its own military personnel accountable for the killings of so many media workers.
In a recent report, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) described 2024 as “one of the worst years” for media professionals. It condemned the “massacre taking place in Palestine before the eyes of the entire world.”
24 January 2026
Source: countercurrents.org