Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Wishah killed in Israeli attack in Gaza
Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Wishah has been killed in an Israeli air attack on a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
He was among two people killed, with at least one other Palestinian injured in Saturday’s raid, according to Al Jazeera colleagues on the ground.
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In a statement, Al Jazeera Media Network said it “condemns the deliberate killing” of the Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent, adding that he is the 12th Al Jazeera media worker to be killed in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal war began in October 2023.
Al Jazeera “renews its call on the international community and legal institutions to take urgent, practical measures to hold the Israeli officials involved in these appalling crimes accountable,” the statement added.
The strike in Bureij camp increased the total number of people killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Saturday to 10.
Among the other casualties were four family members, including two children, whose home was struck in central Gaza City.
A man was killed in an attack to the north of Gaza City, while a woman was killed by Israeli fire in the northern Beit Lahia area, according to our colleagues.
Israeli attacks also happened near groups of people in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood and western Khan Younis, killing at least one person and injuring others.
Ahmed Wishah is the brother of Mohammed Wishah, who was killed on April 8 by Israeli shelling while travelling in his vehicle, according to Palestinian civil defence authorities.
The Israeli military claimed the following day, without providing any evidence, that it killed him because he was a “key terrorist in Hamas’ rocket and weapons production headquarters”.
Al Jazeera condemned Mohammed Wishah’s killing at the time as part of Israel’s “systematic policy of targeting journalists and silencing the voice of truth”.
In a statement to AFP on Saturday, an Israeli military spokesman made a similar allegation about Ahmed Wishah, accusing him, without providing evidence, of being a “Hamas terrorist”.
But in a statement, Al Jazeera refuted that accusation as “baseless”, saying that the Israeli military has “relentlessly spread false allegations” against its staff to “justify its crimes against Al Jazeera journalists and cameramen in Gaza”.
“These attempts deceive no one and cannot obscure the truth witnessed by the world,” the media network said, calling it a “smear campaign”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has previously condemned Israel’s “smearing of killed Palestinian journalists”, with the press freedom group saying it had documented a pattern of Israel “accusing journalists of being terrorists without producing credible evidence”.
In its statement Saturday, Al Jazeera said it is determined “to take every available legal measure to prosecute the perpetrators” of the “crimes” against its staff in Gaza. It added that it remains committed to covering events in the enclave despite the Israeli military’s “attempts to silence the voice of truth”.
The CPJ reports that at least 260 Palestinian journalists have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.
Gaza’s health ministry reported on Saturday that since Israel’s genocidal war began, 73,018 people have been killed and 173,273 wounded.
Since the ‘ceasefire’ was announced last October, Israeli attacks have killed 1,007 and injured 3,165 people.
