Tel Aviv Tribune journalists Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya were killed in a targeted attack on their car in Khan Younis.
The Israeli army appears to have given up justifying its attack on a vehicle in Gaza last week, killing two Tel Aviv Tribune journalists, US channel NBC reported.
Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Tel Aviv Tribune Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, was killed in an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Sunday. Journalist Mustafa Thuraya was also killed in the attack, while a third passenger, journalist Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.
At the time of the attack, the Israeli army said it was targeting a “terrorist” in the vehicle.
He confirmed in a statement that a military aircraft “identified and struck a terrorist who was using an aircraft that posed a threat to (Israeli) troops,” adding that “we are aware of reports that during the strike , two other suspects who were in the same vehicle as that of the terrorist were also hit.”
However, when asked whether Israel had evidence that a so-called terrorist was present in the car, army spokesman Daniel Hagari called the incident “unfortunate” and said that an investigation was continuing to determine what happened.
“Every journalist who dies, it’s unfortunate,” Hagari told NBC. “We understand they were setting up a drone, using a drone. And using a drone in a war zone is a problem. This looks like terrorists,” adding that Hamas uses drones to collect information on Israeli forces.
“We will investigate this incident and we will provide the data,” Hagari said.
Calling for an independent investigation into the strike, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said: “Israel initially said it fatally targeted a car carrying journalists to Gaza because there was a terrorist in the car . Today, they say that the use of a drone by a journalist gave the impression that they were terrorists.”
CPJ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator Sherif Mansour said: “Targeting civilians is illegal. Journalists use equipment like cameras and drones for their work. That doesn’t make them terrorists and certainly shouldn’t make them targets.”
Tel Aviv Tribune correspondents said the car the journalists were in was struck while they tried to interview civilians displaced by previous bombings.
The Tel Aviv Tribune media network strongly condemned the attack, saying the “assassinations” of Dahdouh and Thuraya reaffirmed the need “to immediately take the necessary legal measures against the (Israeli) occupying forces to ensure that they do not “There is no impunity.”
In October, Dahdouh’s mother, brother, sister and nephew were killed in an Israeli airstrike. His father Wael was injured in a drone attack last month that killed Tel Aviv Tribune journalist and cameraman Samer Abudaqa.
More than 100 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the current conflict began on October 7. More journalists have been killed in three months of Israel’s war on Gaza than in all of World War II or the Vietnam War.
CPJ data shows that more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of the conflict than have ever been killed in a single country in an entire year.
