Israel kills three journalists in 'deliberately targeted' strike in south Lebanon

AN ISRAELI STRIKE on a journalist compound has left three television news staffers dead, Lebanese state media has reported.

The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers were among the journalists “deliberately targeted” in the strike, which took place at around 3:30 am this morning.

Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region, which has been spared much of the fighting along the border so far.

Al-Mayadeen also reported that its camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida were both killed in the airstrike alongside Mr Qassim.

The network said Najjar “was a father who risked his life for a just cause, dedicated to revealing the truth, and was killed in cold blood”.

Al-Mayadeen said it has “repeatedly” been the target of attacks from Israeli forces, citing the killing of two camera crew members in November last year and saying Israel had struck the network’s office in Beirut on Wednesday. 

Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary accused Israel of deliberately targeting the journalists, calling the attack “a war crime”. 

“The Israeli enemy waited for the journalists’ nighttime break to betray them in their sleep… This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with prior planning and design, as there were 18 journalists there representing seven media institutions. This is a war crime,” Makary said in a post on X.

Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene — a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets — showing collapsed buildings and cars marked “press” covered in dust and rubble.

Reporting from the scene of the attack, Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said he was “almost speechless” at the the “utter devastation” caused by the strike, as well as the loss of colleagues he saw regularly. 

“These are people that I worked with almost every single day,” Khan said.

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“This is a place that’s not under evacuation order,” he said. “This is a shocking, shockinng state of affairs.” 

The Israeli army did not issue a warning before the strike.

Taoiseach Simon Harris will today meet with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Azmi Mikati. 

Harris is expected to condemn Israeli attacks on densely populated ares in the country. 

Today the Israeli military said that five soldiers were killed and two others seriously wounded in fighting in southern Lebanon.

The soldiers “fell during combat in southern Lebanon” the previous day, the army said in a statement, bringing the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon to 32 since the start of its invasion in late September.

Border crossing bombed

Also today, Lebanon’s transport minister said that Israeli bombing made a second border crossing between the country and Syria impassable – leaving only one main official passage between the two nations operational.

“The Qaa crossing has been put out of service after an Israeli strike on Syrian territory,” Ali Hamieh told AFP, adding that the strike blocked the passage of vehicles.

On 4 October, Israel hit near the Masnaa crossing, the main international passage between Lebanon and Syria, leaving a crater on the road and putting the crossing out of order.

Israel said the air raids were aimed at preventing the flow of weapons into Lebanon to Hezbollah.

Human Rights Watch said the strikes prevented civilians from fleeing and hampered aid operations.

The crossing has been repeatedly struck since then, leaving authorities unable to repair the damage.

Despite the damage to crossing points, many people are still fleeing to Syria on foot.

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Official figures show nearly 500,000 people, mainly Syrians, have fled to Syria after Israel launched an intense air campaign mainly on Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon in late September. 

Lebanon has been hosting around 1.5 million refugees who fled the sivil war in Syria, according to the UN. 

Journalists killed

Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Several journalists have been killed since a near-daily exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border on 8 October last year.

In November 2023, a drone strike killed the two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV.

A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.

Amnesty International called for that attack to be investigated as a potential war crime.

Also last night, in Beirut’s southern Choueifat Al-Amrousieh area, Israeli warplanes “destroyed two buildings and ignited a large fire, and black smoke covered the area,” according to national news outlet NNA.

“The raid that targeted the Saint Therese area also caused the collapse of two buildings near the Constitutional Council.”

Lebanese health officials reported another day of intense airstrikes and shelling yesterday, which they said killed 19 people over 24 hours and raised the overall Lebanese death toll to 2,593 since October last year.

With reporting from AFP and Press Association

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