Israel killed three pro-Hezbollah media journalists while they slept. international

Israeli forces killed three journalists early Friday when they bombed bungalows in southern Lebanon where they were sleeping. They are Ghassan Najjar (cameraman) and Mohammed Reda (sound technician) from Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese channel very close to Iran and its ally Hezbollah; and Wissam Qassem, cameraman for the Lebanese party-militia network, Al Manar. They were not near the battle front, but were resting in Hasbaya, a town that Israel had not previously attacked or requested to evacuate, unlike dozens of others, some very close by. Everything indicates that these three were the targets: they shared housing with colleagues from other chains, who reported local bombings. Ziad Makri, the country’s information minister, speaks of “war crimes.”

The attack – about which the Israeli military has not commented – also injured seven people to varying degrees, according to the Health Ministry. Photographs taken by media at the scene showed several bungalows reduced to rubble and cars with the word “Press” clearly covered in dust. There were 18 journalists from seven Arab media outlets, such as Al Jazeera, Al Yadid, Sky News in Arabic and MTV Lebanon, in the compound.

The bombing occurred at approximately four in the morning (three o’clock in mainland Spain). “The Israeli enemy waited for them to rest at night in order to deceive them while they were sleeping (…) It was a premeditated murder,” the information minister wrote on the X social network.

Authorities, media and journalist associations condemned the attack earlier in the day. Lebanese Prime Minister Nayib Milkati believes this is an (Israeli) attempt to intimidate the media in order to hide the crimes and destruction left in the country, especially in the last month, when they launched an offensive that killed almost 2,000 people lost their lives and one-fifth of the population was displaced. He said, he will include it in the protest document of the United Nations Security Council.

Also on Wednesday, Israeli military aircraft attacked Al Mayadeen’s Beirut headquarters, killing one person and injuring five. The new bombings show how Israel is expanding its objectives beyond the military. On the one hand, there are direct attacks on government institutions, in which a Shia mayor and councilors have been killed. The chief, last week, was Ahmed Kahil, from Nabatiye, a town of 40,000 inhabitants before the war. On the other hand, with the campaign against al-Kader al-Hassan, Hezbollah’s microcredit network has now come into the spotlight, with it being considered a cover for its financing.

Dozens of the network’s headquarters have been bombed in recent days, mainly in the south of the country and Beirut’s suburbs. This also includes attacks against ambulances and paramedics, which they accuse of transporting weapons. They started as far back as October 2023, but have multiplied in recent weeks.

Israeli forces have killed another 10 information professionals in Lebanon since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began on October 8, 2023. One of the most notorious cases is that of Issam Abdullah, employed by the news agency Reuters. Early in the shootout, he was hit by an Israeli tank shot, which also injured several of his comrades, some of them seriously. Subsequent investigations by international human rights organizations and grassroots media outlets agreed that the shootings were deliberate.

The number of journalists killed in Lebanon is lower than the number of journalists killed over the same period in Gaza, the place in the world where the most journalists have been killed in such a short period of time: about 130.