The Unfolding Tragedy: The Killing of Journalists in Gaza

By Dima Khatib, Palestinian journalist/Managing Director of AJ+

it’s the largest massacre of journalists in human history.

In Gaza, 253 Palestinian journalists adn media workers have been killed sence October 2023 – more than those killed in the wars of Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Balkans, world War I, and World War II combined. Yet these killings remain mostly uninvestigated, unpunished, and unacknowledged by those responsible – a stark example of the impunity that allows attacks on journalists too continue.

Ten of those 253 were my colleagues at Al Jazeera media Network.

I still miss the voice of my colleague, Anas Al-Sharif, every morning from Gaza City – reporting on the humanitarian situation, talking to people every day.

He was killed in a targeted attack on journalists near Al Shifa Hospital on August 10, 2025.

He left behind a family who will forever be without a father, and a farewell letter that went viral – a heartbreaking tradition now common among Gaza’s journalists, who leave their last words in hospitals to be delivered to loved ones after their death.

No other media organisation has ever lost so many journalists in such a short time, in any single conflict.

These are reporters and camerapersons who have been working under inhuman conditions for a prolonged period: bombed, starved, displaced, hunted, and threatened.

Their killings aren’t accidents of war but deliberate state policy – and the whole world is watching it live on their phones.

their work should be celebrated as heroic. Were it not for them, the world might never have known what’s been happening in Gaza, as Israel doesn’t allow foreign journalists to enter unless embedded with the israeli army and reporting under its scrutiny. it’s still the case today.