LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Reporters Without Borders says Israel's lethal attacks on the media in Gaza have created the highest death toll for journalists ever recorded in a single year of war anywhere. NPR's Aya Batrawy reports on the latest attack that killed Gaza's most prominent television journalist Sunday night. And a warning - in this piece, which lasts about three minutes, you'll hear descriptions of that attack.
(CROSSTALK)
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Journalists cry out in disbelief. "Anas al-Sharif has just been martyred," they say. The video shows the moments after a press tent was struck. Inside is 28-year-old al-Sharif's lifeless, bloodied body, killed while wearing a blue press vest journalists don in war zones. Al-Sharif always wore it. He was a target, one of six Al Jazeera journalists named in a list 10 months ago by Israel, which accused them of having ties with militant groups. He saw his friends on that list assassinated or severely wounded. But al-Sharif, a father of two young children, one of whom was born in the war, never wavered and never left the north.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANAS AL-SHARIF: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: His boyish face and neatly combed hair belied the raw force of his live broadcasts in besieged areas of northern Gaza bombed by Israeli fighter jets.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AL-SHARIF: (Shouting in Arabic).
(SCREAMING)
AL-SHARIF: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: That reporting gained him huge admiration in Gaza and a combined social media following of 2 million people globally. In all, six journalists were killed in Sunday night's attack, five of them with Al Jazeera, the network says. It happened just as Israel's government plans to take over all of Gaza City, raising questions as to why the military killed al-Sharif now. Al Jazeera says the attack is an attempt to, quote, "silence the voices exposing the" military's "impending seizure and occupation of Gaza."
Israel's military confirmed the airstrike, saying al-Sharif was a Hamas cell commander operating under the false cover of a journalist. The military published digitally altered graphics of documents it says show al-Sharif was a, quote, "terrorist" within the ranks of Hamas. The Committee to Protect Journalists says the allegations are unsubstantiated. Here's the group's chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg, speaking to NPR after Israel first made allegations against him and other Al Jazeera journalists last October.
JODIE GINSBERG: This is part of a pattern that we've seen from Israel in which Israel alleges that journalists are terrorists and then fails to produce any real, credible evidence that they are such.
BATRAWY: The group confirms nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza in Israeli attacks in this war.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AL-SHARIF: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: In his last broadcast, al-Sharif showed images of Gaza's famished children suffering from Israeli restrictions on aid. Al-Sharif experienced the loss of his father early in the war in an airstrike on the family's home, and he came to anticipate death. In a prewritten statement published after his killing, he says that through pain and suffering, he never once hesitated to convey the truth.
Aya Batrawy, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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