LONDON: Palestinian photojournalist Mohammad Wadi was killed along with two other people in an Israeli strike on Tuesday morning in the Gaza Strip, according to local reports.
Wadi was reportedly hit in a drone strike east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza — an area under Israeli military control — while documenting the situation on the ground. Sources said he died instantly.
Journalist Mohammed Abdel Fattah Aslih — the brother of journalist Hassan Aslih, who was killed in an Israeli strike on the emergency department of Nasser Hospital in May — was wounded in the same attack.
In two separate incidents, another Palestinian was killed in an Israeli drone strike in central Khan Younis, and a third was shot dead in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
According to accounts that Arab News could not independently verify, Wadi was a well-known wedding photographer in Khan Younis before turning to documenting the conflict in Gaza, after his Quds Studio was destroyed by an Israeli bombardment.
He is the second media worker reported killed since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
Journalist and social media influencer Saleh Al-Jafarawi — widely recognized during the Gaza conflict for his frontline video reporting — was shot dead in October by members of an armed militia from the Doghmush clan during clashes with Hamas in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City.
Fellow journalists have taken to social media to warn that conditions for media workers in Gaza remain extremely dangerous despite the ceasefire declared in October.
According to figures from Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel violated the ceasefire at least 591 times between Oct. 10 and Nov. 29, including through airstrikes, artillery fire and direct shootings. Those attacks killed at least 356 Palestinians and wounded 909.
Amnesty International said in November that more than a month after a ceasefire had been announced and all surviving Israeli hostages released, Israeli authorities were still committing genocide against Palestinians “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signaling any change in their intent.”
The UN on Monday held a Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East, during which a message from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The rules of war are clear: Civilians and civilian infrastructure are not a target. Journalists must be able to perform their essential work without interference, intimidation or harm. This includes the unacceptable ban that prevents international journalists from accessing Gaza.”
