At least 39 journalists have been killed in just over one month of Israel’s war on Gaza – that’s more than double the number of fatalities in one and a half years of Russia-Ukraine war – in what has been described as “the deadliest month for journalists”.
Israel has also been accused of violating laws of war due to its indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 10,500 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians. The Hamas attack inside Israel on October 7 killed more than
The Israel-Hamas war has seen more journalists killed in the first month of conflict than any other conflict since the CPJ first started collating statistics for journalists covering conflict in 1992.
Christophe Deloire, RSF’s secretary-general, has described the toll as “shocking”, with the number likely to rise as the media watchdog continues to investigate reports of several other journalists either injured or missing.
In the war between Russia and Ukraine, 17 journalists in total have been killed since the war began in 2022, the last reported killing being of French cameraman Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff who was killed in May.
The US-led invasion of Iraq sparked a war that was particularly deadly for journalists – and set a trend that has continued. According to the CPJ, 283 journalists have been killed in Iraq since 2003. That includes 11 who were killed in the first month of the war, between March and April 2003.
The war in Syria had zero journalist causalities in its first month of conflict in 2011, although the toll there has since increased dramatically to between 270 and 715, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
By comparison, 63 journalists were killed in the Vietnam War that lasted two decades, and a total of 69 killed in World War II (1939-45) – the bloodiest war the modern world has seen.
Aljazeera News
