New Delhi: Ayelet Arnin was 22 when she was covering the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on October 7. It was then that Hamas struck. Arnin was among the 260 people killed during the massacre carried out by the Palestinian militant group.
An American citizen, Arnin was a sub-editor in Israel’s main broadcaster Kan. A friend informed Arnin’s parents about her death in the dastardly attack. “The Israel Broadcasting Corporation is saddened by the murder of our friend, Ayelet Arnin, an employee of the corporation, a sub-editor in the news division, in an attack by Hamas terrorists in the south,” Kan News Division spokesman Elon Baruch said in a statement four days after her death.
On October 25, as the war raged on, Salma Mukhaimer, a freelance Palestinian journalist, was killed along with her child during an Israeli airstrike on civilians in Rafah City in south Gaza. Earlier, on October 11, after the latest Israel-Palestine war broke out, Mukhaimer had posted on her Facebook account: “If we are absent and the news about us disappears, prayer connects us.”
A day after, Duaa Sharaf, a presenter with the Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa Radio, was killed along with her child during an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza. In a Telegram post, Al Aqsa Radio confirmed the tragic demise of Sharaf.
Till now, the Israel-Palestine war has claimed over 10,000 lives on both sides including 3,500 children, most of them in Gaza. Arnin, Mukhaimer and Sharaf are among the 31 journalists killed in 25 days till October 31 after the war erupted on October 7. These include 26 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese.
On October 7, the day Hamas launched the attack in Israel and the latter launched retaliatory attacks, apart from Arnin, five other journalists on both sides lost their lives, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
That day, Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, a photographer for Ain Media, was shot dead at the Gaza Strip’s Erez Crossing into Israel. Mohammad Jarghoun, a journalist with Smart Media, was shot dead by Israeli forces while reporting on the conflict in an area to the east of Rafah City. Mohammad Al-Salhi, a photojournalist working for the Fourth Authority news agency, was shot dead near a Palestinian refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Yaniv Zohar, an Israeli photographer working for the Hebrew language daily newspaper Israel Hayom, was killed during a Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel, along with his wife and two daughters. That same day, during the same Hamas attack that killed Arnin, Shai Regev, who served as an editor for TMI, the gossip and entertainment news section of the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Maariv, lost her life.
The next day, Assaad Shamlakh, a freelance journalist, was killed along with nine members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Sheikh Ijlin, a neighbourhood in the southern Gaza Strip.
Two days later, on October 10, three more journalists lost their lives. Saeed al-Taweel, Editor-in-Chief of the Al-Khamsa News website, Mohammed Sobh, a photographer from Khabar news agency, and Hisham Alnwajha, a journalist with Khabar news agency, were killed when Israeli warplanes struck an area housing several media outlets in Gaza City’s Rimal district.
On October 11, Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar, a freelance photojournalist, was killed during an Israeli airstrike in Rafah City. A day later, Ahmed Shehab, a journalist for Sowt Al-Asra Radio (Radio Voice of the Prisoners), was killed along with his wife and three children, in an Israeli airstrike on his house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.
October 13 saw the deaths of three more journalists. The body of Salam Mema, a freelance journalist and head of the Women Journalists Committee at the Palestinian Media Assembly, was recovered from the rubble three days after her home in the Jabalia refugee camp was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Husam Mubarak, a journalist for Al Aqsa Radio, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip. Issam Abdallah, a Beirut, Lebanon-based videographer for the Reuters news agency, was killed near the Lebanon border during shelling by Israeli forces.
On October 14, Yousef Maher Dawas, a contributing writer for Palestine Chronicle and a writer for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project, was killed in an Israeli missile strike on his family’s home at Beit Lahia in north Gaza.
Two days later, Abdulhadi Habib, a journalist who worked for Al-Manara News Agency and HQ News Agency, was killed along with several of his family members when a missile strike hit his house near the Zeitoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City.
On October 17, Mohammad Balousha, a journalist and the administrative and financial manager of the local media channel Palestine Today office in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Saftawi neighbourhood in northern Gaza. The same day, Issam Bhar, a journalist for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the north Gaza.
The day after, Sameeh Al-Nady, a director for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. On October 19, Khalil Abu Aathra, videographer for Al-Aqsa TV, was killed along with his brother in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah.
On October 20, two more deaths of journalists on both sides were reported. Mohammed Ali, a journalist from Al-Shabab Radio (Youth Radio), was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the north Gaza. On the other side, Israeli Roee journalist Idan was declared dead after his body was recovered. Idan, a photographer for the Israeli newspaper Ynet, was initially reported missing when his wife and daughter were killed in a Hamas attack on October 7 on Kibbutz Kfar Aza. According to the CPJ, Idan was on duty when he was killed.
Two days later, Roshdi Sarraj, a journalist and co-founder of Ain Media, a Palestinian company specialising in professional media services, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. Then again, on October 23, Mohammed Imad Labad, a journalist for the Al Resalah news website, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City.
On October 25, apart from Mukhaimer, two more journalists lost their lives. Saed Al-Halabi, a journalist for Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Jabalia refugee camp. Ahmed Abu Mhadi, also of Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip.
After Sharaf’s death on October 26, on October 27, Yasser Abu Namous of the Al-Sahel media organisation was killed in an airstrike on his family home in Khan Yunis, Gaza. The latest death of a journalist during the 25-day period was reported on October 30 when Nazmi Al-Nadim, a deputy director of finance and administration for Palestine TV, was killed with members of his family in an airstrike on his home in Zeitoun area of eastern Gaza.
During the same period, eight journalists have been injured and nine others were reported missing or detained.
“Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heart-breaking conflict,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator, said in a statement. “Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats. Many have lost colleagues, families, and media facilities, and have fled seeking safety when there is no safe haven or exit.”
Where truth becomes a casualty and voices are silenced, these journalists remain beacons of unwavering dedication, their stories etched in history as a stark reminder of the high cost of shedding light on the darkest corners of conflict.
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