Three journalists from the Hezbollah-affiliated TV stations Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on their press station in Hasbaya, southern Lebanon, early on Friday morning.
The strikes hit a group of small chalets that 18 journalists from at least seven different media outlets – including Al Jazeera, Sky News Arabia and TRT – were staying in while covering the Israel-Hezbollah war in south Lebanon. Several cars with “Press” signs on them were parked in front of the site.
Wissam Qassem, a camera operator with Al-Manar, and Al Mayadeen’s Ghassan Najjar, a correspondent, and Mohammad Reda, a technician, were killed in the strike. Al-Manar is a Hezbollah media outlet and Al Mayadeen is a pro-Hezbollah outlet, but rights groups have said political affiliation does not make journalists a legitimate target. Journalists are considered civilians under international humanitarian law and deliberately targeting them is a war crime.
The killings were condemned by Lebanon’s minister of information, Ziad Makary, who called the attack a war crime. Israel has killed 12 journalists in Lebanon – six of whom were on duty – since fighting began on 8 October 2023, including the Reuters photographer Issam Abdallah. Investigations by six international human rights organisations and media outlets concluded that Abdallah was killed by an Israeli tank in an “apparently deliberate” strike.
Friday’s strike hit the group of journalists at about 3.30am local time (0130 BST). “The airstrike happened while we were sleeping. I don’t remember hearing the sound of the explosion, I heard the sound of the rocket. I came out and found the chalet had fallen on the [journalists],” said Darine El Helwe, a senior correspondent with Sky News Arabia who was present at the time of the strike.
The group of journalists had been using Hasbaya as a base for the past month, sleeping there and then going south during the day to cover the war. Hasbaya is not affiliated with Hezbollah and had largely been spared by Israeli strikes over the past year. The journalists relocated there after their previous residence in the south became unsafe due to intensifying Israeli bombing.
El Helwe said the strike would probably have a chilling effect on journalists, many of whom had previously operated in south-east Lebanon under the assumption that it was safe from Israeli strikes.
She said: “It was the only region that still would transmit pictures of airstrikes, targeting and skirmishes. I guess Israel doesn’t want these pictures to come out any more. If they wanted to target a team from the journalists, they could have targeted them on the road because they know the cars. But to target us at night while we’re sleeping?”
The strikes specifically hit the chalet in which the Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar journalists were residing. On Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike struck Al Mayadeen’s office in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which had already been evacuated. Two of its journalists were killed a year earlier in an Israeli airstrike while reporting in south Lebanon.
At least 125 journalists have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza over the past year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Wednesday Israel accused six journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The network described the allegations as “baseless” and called for the international community to intervene to protect the lives of the six journalists named by Israel.