Journalists or Terrorists? Israeli Army Claims Gaza Strike in Rafah Killed Two 'Terror Operatives'

Israel’s army has claimed that two journalists, who worked for Qatar-based Al Jazeera and were killed in a recent air strike in Gaza, were “terror operatives”.

Hamza Wael Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, who also worked as a video stringer for several news outlets, were killed on Sunday while they were on an assignment in the city of Rafah.

The army said in a statement on Wednesday its “intelligence has confirmed that both the deceased were members of Gaza-based terrorist organisations actively involved in attacks against IDF (army) forces”. “Prior to the strike, the two operated drones, posing an imminent threat to IDF troops,” the army said.

The Israeli army said Thuria was identified in a document found by troops in Gaza to be a member of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade, while Dahdouh was identified as a “terrorist” belonging to Islamic Jihad. The army statement included a copy of a document it said was a list of “operatives from an electronic engineering unit of the Islamic Jihad, including Dahdouh and his military number”.

Dahdouh and Thuria were killed when the car they were travelling in was hit by two rockets on a street in Rafah, according to multiple news agencies. A third journalist and the driver of the car were wounded. Thuria, in his 30s, and Dahdouh had been tasked with filming the aftermath of a strike on a house in Rafah and their car was hit while they were on their way back.

Al Jazeera has accused Israel of targeting the “Palestinian journalists’ car”, and “violating the principles of freedom of the press”. Hamas’s press office meanwhile said the army’s claims were false and that Israel “creates false pretexts to justify its massacres and crimes against Palestinian civilians and journalists”. Hamza’s father Wael al-Dahdouh is Al Jazeera‘s Gaza bureau chief, and was recently wounded in a strike himself after his wife and two other children were killed in Israeli bombardment in the initial weeks of the war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that their deaths were an “unimaginable tragedy”. “And that’s also been the case for… far too many innocent Palestinian men, women and children,” Blinken said. On Monday, Wael’s two nephews Ahmed al-Dahdouh and Muhammad al-Dahdouh were also killed in a strike when travelling in a car in Rafah, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The war in Gaza erupted when Hamas militants stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel in an unprecedented attack on October 7 which left some 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians. Israel has promised to eliminate Hamas, and has kept up a relentless bombing of Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed at least 23,357 people. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 79 journalists and media professionals have died since the start of the war, of which the vast majority are Palestinian.

(With agency inputs)