DUBAI: An Israeli attack on media offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Sept. 10 that killed 31 journalists and media workers was the deadliest strike of its kind anywhere in the world in 16 years, according to media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Thirty of those who died worked for one of two newspapers, 26 September and Yemen. The offices for both were in the headquarters of the Moral Guidance Directorate, the media arm of the Houthi-controlled government, the CPJ said.
The Houthi health ministry said 35 people in all were killed in the attack, and 131 injured.
Nasser Al-Khadri, the editor-in-chief of 26 September, the Yemeni army’s official media outlet, told the watchdog: “It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words.”
A child who had accompanied a journalist to work was among the dead, and 22 media workers were among the injured, he added.
The strikes occurred at around 4:45 p.m. as staff were finalizing publication of the weekly newspaper, Al-Khadri said. The attack destroyed its “facilities, printing presses and archives,” he added, resulting in “deeply painful” losses.
The CPJ described the incident as the “second-deadliest single attack on the press” it had ever recorded, after the 2009 Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines in which 32 journalists were among 58 people killed. It added that the attack on Sanaa “marks deadliest global attack in 16 years.”
Abdulrahman Mohammed Mutahar, a journalist who lives in the neighborhood where the strikes took place, told the CPJ that the assault caused “massive explosions unlike anything Sanaa had seen since 2015.”
About eight missiles reduced the headquarters of the Moral Guidance Directorate to rubble, underneath which the bodies of some of the journalists were buried, he added.
On Sept 16., the funerals of those killed on Sept. 10 were interrupted by additional Israeli strikes.
Yemeni journalists say they live in fear of both international and domestic aggressors. Yousef Hazeb, head of the National Organization of Yemeni Reporters, told the CPJ they were “paying a double price for their work,” at the mercy of “deadly Israeli airstrikes targeting journalists and media outlets,” as well as local forces, including the Houthis, “who use the war as a pretext to expand repression.”
Within hours of the Israeli strikes on Sept. 10, Yemen’s public prosecutor issued a ban on the publication of photos or videos taken at the scene of the attack.
In a message posted on social media platform X, the Israeli army said the strikes on Sanaa, and others in the northern province of Al-Jawf, were in “response to repeated attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis.”
It added that the targets included the “Houthi Public Relations Department, responsible for distributing propaganda messages in the media, and psychological terror.”
The CPJ has classified the killing of the 31 media workers in Yemen as “murders” arising from the “deliberate targeting of journalists for their work.” The watchdog said Israel has been responsible for the killings of one in six journalists globally since 2016. It has documented the murders of 227 journalists globally in the past decade, and found Israel to be responsible for more than 16 percent of them through attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen.
The latest strikes confirms the long-standing pattern of Israeli authorities in “labeling journalists as terrorists or propagandists to justify their killings,” said Sara Qudah, the CBJ’s regional program director.
It also marks “an alarming escalation, extending Israel’s war on journalism far beyond the genocide in Gaza,” she added.
Qudah, like representatives of other press groups and human rights advocates, said strikes on news outlets and media workers violate the principles of international law.
Radio and television facilities are civilian objects and cannot be targeted, Human Rights Watch said. They cannot be considered military targets “simply because they are pro-Houthi or anti-Israel” because this does not directly contribute to military operations, it added.
The CPJ said that journalists, as civilians, are protected under the rule of international law, including those who work for state-run outlets or are affiliated with armed groups, unless they play a direct part in hostilities.
The strikes on Yemen show the continuous and repeated failure of Israeli authorities to “distinguish between military targets and journalists, justifying its assassinations by smearing journalists as terrorists or propagandists, without credible evidence,” the CPJ added.
