Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 28,576 people: Hamas (file photo)
New York:
Seventy-two of the 99 journalists killed in 2023 were killed in Israel’s war with Hamas, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Thursday, making the past 12 months the deadliest for media in almost a decade .
The Committee to Protect Journalists said that without the deaths in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon, the global number of journalists killed would have declined year-on-year, although deaths in Somalia and the Philippines remained stable.
The death toll is the highest since 2015, an increase of nearly 44% from 2022.
“In December 2023, CPJ reported that more journalists were killed in the first three months of the Israel-Gaza war than in a single country in a year,” CPJ said.
The organization said the 72 journalists killed in the conflict between Israel and Hamas also included three Lebanese and two Israelis.
“Journalists in Gaza are witnessing from the front lines,” said Judy Ginsburg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“The huge losses suffered by Palestinian journalists in this war will have long-lasting consequences for journalism, not just in the Palestinian territories but across the region and beyond. Every journalist killed is a further blow to our understanding of the world .”
On February 7, the New York-based press freedom organization stated that the number of journalists killed in the conflict in Gaza had risen to 85.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has previously criticized the Israeli military’s “persecution” of journalists and is investigating whether the dozen journalists killed in the Gaza conflict were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers and whether this constituted a “war crime.”
AFP, based on official Israeli statistics, has vowed to crack down on Hamas in response to the Islamist group’s attack on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,160 people, mostly civilians.
Agents also took about 250 people hostage in the country’s worst-ever attack, about 130 of whom are believed to remain in Gaza and 29 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 28,576 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
The largest declines in journalist deaths occurred in Ukraine and Mexico, where the death toll fell from 13 to two in both countries.
AFP journalist Arman Soldin was one of the victims in Ukraine. Soldin, 32, died when his reporting team was attacked near the eastern city of Bahmut.
The Committee to Protect Journalists warned that Mexico, along with the Philippines and Somalia, are “among the most lethal countries in the world for media.”
“The situation is compounded by surveillance of journalists and activists by government agencies, with large numbers of journalists forced to leave their homes and careers as a result of the violence,” the CPJ report warned.
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