LONDON: Palestinian journalist Shrouq Al Aila, who has been covering Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, is set to receive a 2024 International Press Freedom Award in November, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced on Thursday.
Al Aila, 29, is among four awardees who “have withstood extraordinary challenges to continue reporting on their communities while experiencing war, prison, government crackdowns, and the rising criminalization of their work,” CPJ said in a statement.
A journalist, producer and researcher, Al Aila assumed leadership of Ain Media, a Gaza-based independent production company, after Roshdi Sarraj, her husband and the firm’s co-founder, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October.
On Oct. 7, the Israeli military launched a bombing campaign across the Gaza Strip after Hamas carried out a surprise attack in southern Israel. The hostilities have so far killed at least 41,272 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to the enclave’s health authority.
The onslaught has displaced more than 90 percent of Gaza’s population at least once, devastated the health, sanitation and water services, and annihilated entire residential neighborhoods.
Repeatedly displaced by the Israeli bombardment, Al Aila continues to cover the war and its devastating impact on Gaza’s residents.
Al Aila and her late husband Sarraj were on a business trip in Saudi Arabia when the war started in their hometown Gaza, prompting them to quickly return to report on the developments.
On Oct. 22, Sarraj was killed in an Israeli airstrike, and Al Aila swiftly assumed responsibility and headed their company, Ain Media.
Alongside Al Aila, CPJ’s International Press Freedom Awards this year will also recognize journalists Quimy de Leon from Guatemala, Alsu Kurmasheva who was detained in Russia, and Samira Sabou from Niger.
