Committee to Protect Journalists / August 2, 2024
Editor’s note: The list below is CPJ’s most recent and preliminary account of journalist casualties in the war. Our database will not include all of these cases until we have completed further investigations into the circumstances surrounding them. For more information, read our FAQ.
The Israel-Gaza war has taken an unprecedented toll on Gazan journalists since Israel declared war on Hamas following its attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
As of Aug 2, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 39,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
Journalists in Gaza face particularly high risks as they try to cover the conflict during the Israeli ground assault, including devastating Israeli airstrikes, disrupted communications, supply shortages, and extensive power outages. This has meant that it is becoming increasingly hard to document the situation, and CPJ is investigating almost 350 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries.
INDEX
By month (killed only)
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price–their lives–for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York. “Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”
Journalists are civilians and are protected by International Law. Deliberately targeting civilians constitutes a war crime. In May, the International Criminal Court announced it was seeking arrest warrant applications for Hamas and Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. To date, CPJ has determined that at least three journalists were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders, but is still researching the details for confirmation in at least 10 other cases that indicate possible targeting.
As of Aug 2:
- 113 journalists and media workers were confirmed killed: 108 Palestinian, two Israeli, and three Lebanese.
- 32 journalists were reported injured.
- 2 journalists were reported missing.
- 52 journalists were reported arrested.
- Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.
CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes.
The list published here includes names based on information obtained from CPJ’s sources in the region and media reports. It includes all journalists* involved in news-gathering activity. It is not always immediately clear whether all of these journalists were covering the conflict at the time of their deaths, but CPJ has included them in its count as it investigate their circumstances.
The list is being updated on a regular basis, with names being removed if CPJ confirms that those members of the media were not working journalists at the time they were killed, injured or went missing.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly told media outlets that the army does not deliberately target journalists. It also told agencies in October that it cannot guarantee the safety of the journalists. CPJ has called for an end to the longstanding pattern of impunity in cases of journalists killed by the IDF.
U.N. experts have raised concerns over the killings of journalists, saying in a February statement that they were “alarmed at the extraordinarily high numbers of journalists and media workers who have been killed, attacked, injured and detained in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Gaza, in recent months blatantly disregarding international law.”
Journalists and media workers reported killed, missing, or injured – see the full list of names :
Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war – Committee to Protect Journalists (cpj.org)
