PARIS: Christophe Deloire, who negotiated to free imprisoned journalists around the world and offered refuge to reporters under threat as the head of media freedom group Reporters Without Borders, died Saturday. He was 53.
Deloire had been battling sudden and aggressive cancer and died in Paris surrounded by loved ones, according to board members of Reporters Without Borders, also known by its French acronym RSF.
Deloire was ‘’a tireless defender, on every continent, of the freedom, independence and pluralism of journalism, in a context of information chaos,” RSF said in a statement.
“Journalism was his life’s struggle, which he fought with unshakeable conviction,’’ it added.
With boundless energy and a ready smile even when dishing out trenchant criticism, Deloire traveled constantly, to Ukraine, Turkiye, Africa and beyond to lobby governments and defend journalists behind bars or under threat. Press freedom activists from many countries shared tributes to his work and mourned his passing.
Deloire helped Russian broadcast journalist Marina Ovsiannikova flee Russia in a secret operation in 2022 after she came under fire for denouncing the war in Ukraine on live television. RSF also launched a program to provide protective equipment and training to Ukrainian journalists after Russia’s invasion.
Publicly and behind the scenes, Deloire worked for the release of journalist Olivier Dubois, held by Islamic extremists in Mali for two years and freed in 2023, and for other jailed reporters.
In his 12 years at the helm of RSF, he expanded the group’s reach and activism and raised its profile with governments. RSF under his watch launched the Journalism Trust Initiative, a program to certify media organizations to restore public trust in the news, and a program called Forum for Democracy aimed at heading off threats to democratic thought and freedoms.
Born May 22, 1971 in Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy, Deloire worked as an investigative reporter and led a prominent French journalism school, CFJ, before becoming director of RSF.
He is survived by his wife Perrine and their son Nathan.

LONDON: A bomb used by the Israeli military to strike a UN-run school in Gaza, killing at least 45 people including women and children, was made in the US, a new investigation has revealed.

A video reviewed by the New York Times and corroborated by weapons experts showed that the remnants of the device dropped on the school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, was a GBU-39 — a bomb designed and manufactured by aviation and defense giant Boeing.

“This distinct nose is unique to the GBU-39 munition series, and, due to its solid construction, it can survive the blast intact,” Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said, adding that the damage caused to the building is evidence of the use of this type of precision-guided weapon.

A similar analysis by CNN appeared to confirm these findings.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out Thursday’s airstrike, stating it targeted a Hamas compound operating inside the school. It added that “many measures were taken to minimize the danger of harming uninvolved individuals,” including aerial surveillance and “additional precise intelligence.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the director of UNRWA, wrote on social media that around 6,000 Palestinians had been sheltering in the school complex.

The school was also attacked in mid-May, during which the Israeli military claimed to have killed 15 Hamas militants.

Footage uploaded to Instagram and Telegram on Thursday shortly after the strike shows the nose tip of the GBU-39, along with objects such as cans of food and clothes covered in rubble near the site of the strike, suggesting the damage was recent.

In one of the videos, a man can be seen recovering body parts from the scene, holding up a severed finger to the camera.

This incident marks the second time in two weeks that separate investigations have confirmed the use of US-manufactured munitions in deadly Israeli attacks on displaced Palestinians.

In May, US-made weaponry appeared to have been used in a strike on a displacement camp in Gaza, during which at least 45 people died and more than 200 were injured after a fire broke out.

According to the New York Times, US officials have been encouraging the Israeli military for months to use GBU-39s, a lighter and more precise alternative to the heavier and more lethal 2,000-pound bombs previously used in the campaign.

“While they’re using smaller bombs, they’re still deliberately targeting where they know there are civilians,” Bryant added.

“The only thing they’ve done in going down from 2,000-pound bombs to 250-pound bombs is killing a few less civilians.”