The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in the United States, revealed today, Thursday, that the first ten weeks of the Israel-Gaza war is the "deadliest ever" for journalists, with the highest number of journalists killed in a single year in one location. The committee's data also indicates that four Israeli journalists and three Lebanese journalists, including Reuters video journalist Issam Abdullah, were killed between October 7 and December 20.
The committee stated that it will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of all journalists. It noted that these efforts in Gaza have been hindered by widespread destruction and the deaths of family members of journalists, who often serve as sources for investigators looking into how journalists were killed.
The committee pointed out that journalism in Gaza has been severely restricted under the intense Israeli bombardment, with frequent communication outages and shortages of food, fuel, and shelter, adding that foreign journalists were largely unable to access the area independently for most of the war.
Sharif Mansour, the coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists' program in the Middle East and North Africa, said, "The Israel-Gaza war is the most dangerous situation we have seen for journalists, and these numbers clearly show that." He continued, "The Israeli military has killed more journalists in the past ten weeks than any other army or entity has killed in a single year. With each journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and understand."
