The news organizations and health officials for the three journalists who were killed and three others who were hurt say that an Israeli airstrike on a compound in southeast Lebanon on Friday.
The pro-Iranian Al Mayadeen network said it lost a cameraman and a broadcast engineer in the attack in Hasbaya, which is close to the border with Israel. The Hezbollah-run Al-Manar network said one of its cameramen died in the attack.
The Lebanese Information Minister, Ziad Makary, said that the site was home to seven news organizations and 18 journalists. He said that the attack was planned and that it was a “war crime.”
The BBC named the three people who died as Wissam Qassem from Al Manar, Ghassan Najjar, a cameraman, and Mohamed Reda, an engineer from Al Mayadeen. All three were from Lebanon.
Online videos that are supposed to show what happened after the airstrike show vehicles, flak jackets, and other items that are clearly marked “Press.” However, these labels may not have been visible because the airstrike happened at night, around 3 a.m. local time.
The Israeli Defense Forces did not say anything right away, but groups fighting for press freedom and the safety of journalists spoke out against the attack. It is the eighth time that Israeli strikes have killed journalists in Lebanon.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it “strongly condemned” the killing of three reporters by Israel in southern Lebanon.
“The international community must act to stop Israel’s long-standing pattern of killing journalists and getting away with it,” the group said in a post on X.
Israel has always denied that it kills journalists, but the CPJ found that since the attacks on October 7, 2023, at least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. This is the deadliest time for journalists in the 32-year history of the organization.
At least three of the people killed worked for Al Jazeera, an international TV news network based in Qatar.
Israel kicked Al Jazeera out of the country in May because of how it covered the Gaza war, which the Israeli government and military said was unfair and unbalanced.
Israel said on Wednesday that six Al Jazeera journalists were working for Hamas. They said that they were using Al Jazeera’s global reach to promote Hamas, a group that the US and many other Western countries consider a terrorist organization.
It also said that five of the six were in the military for Hamas and had jobs like sniper and battalion team commander in addition to their propaganda work.
There was “unequivocal” documentary evidence against the journalists, but Al Jazeera denied all of Israel’s claims and said the IDF was targeting its staff working in Gaza as a policy.
The CPJ was also skeptical of the IDF’s claims, saying that they were part of a pattern of false accusations.
“Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” the group said, citing similar “documentary proof” that confirmed that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail Al-Ghoul.
Who was killed in a July IDF drone strike in Gaza and was 26 years old at the time, had been given a Hamas military rank in 2007, when he would have been 10 years old.