Mohammed Abu Hatab, a correspondent for a Palestinian television channel, and 11 members of his family were killed in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Palestine TV, where Abu Hatab worked and which is run by the Palestinian Authority, said they were killed at home by an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military has not responded to a request for comment.
Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, said Abu Hatab’s wife, son, and brother were among the dead.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said more media workers have been killed than in any other conflict in the area since it started tracking the data in 1992.
As of Friday, 36 media workers — 31 Palestinians, four Israelis, and one Lebanese — have been killed since Oct. 7, the group said.
Photographs showed people searching through the rubble of the home Thursday and Friday, unearthing relics of the family’s everyday life. At Abu Hatab’s funeral on Friday, dozens of relatives, friends, and fellow journalists wept and prayed above his shrouded body. Atop it rested a blue flak jacket and a microphone.
One of Abu Hatab’s colleagues at Palestine TV, Salman Al-Bashir, discussed his death on air Thursday, in an emotional dispatch that the network also posted on social media.
Speaking from the Nasser Hospital morgue, Al-Bashir removed his press vest and helmet, his voice breaking, as he lamented that not even protective gear — the flak jacket says “Press,” in blue capital letters — has kept journalists alive.
An initial investigation by Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group, that was released Monday found that Issam Abdallah, a visual journalist for Reuters who was killed Oct. 13, had been “targeted” by a strike that the group said came from the Israeli border.
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