Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Wishah was killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the network. Colleagues on the ground said a second person was killed and at least one other Palestinian was injured in the Saturday attack.
Wishah worked as a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher. The network said he was the 12th member of its staff killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023. It condemned his death as deliberate and called for international and legal institutions to pursue accountability. That allegation of intentional targeting was Al Jazeera’s position; the supplied evidence did not independently establish intent.
An Israeli military spokesperson gave a sharply different account, telling Agence France-Presse that Wishah was a Hamas member. The military did not provide supporting evidence with the allegation, according to Al Jazeera. The network rejected the claim as baseless and said similar accusations were being used to justify attacks on its journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists had previously criticized what it described as an Israeli pattern of labeling killed Palestinian journalists as terrorists without producing credible proof. CPJ said at least 260 Palestinian journalists had been killed since the Gaza war began. The supplied report did not include a separate CPJ assessment of the specific circumstances of Wishah’s death.
Wishah’s brother, Mohammed Wishah, had been killed on April 8 when Israeli shelling struck his vehicle, according to Palestinian civil defence authorities. The next day, Israel’s military accused Mohammed of holding an important role in Hamas’s weapons and rocket-production apparatus, again without providing evidence in the account supplied. Al Jazeera had also rejected that allegation and described his killing as part of a broader effort to silence journalists.
The Bureij strike occurred amid a series of attacks across Gaza on Saturday. Al Jazeera said at least 10 people were killed that day. Four members of one family, including two children, died when their home in central Gaza City was hit. Other reported deaths occurred north of Gaza City, in Beit Lahia and during attacks near Sheikh Radwan and western Khan Younis.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the war’s overall toll had reached 73,018 killed and 173,273 wounded. It reported that Israeli attacks since an October ceasefire announcement had killed 1,007 people and injured 3,165. Those statistics came from Palestinian health authorities and were not independently verified within the supplied material.
Al Jazeera said it would continue reporting from Gaza and pursue legal action over attacks on its staff. The competing accounts surrounding Wishah—one identifying him as a working cameraman, the other alleging militant affiliation—remained unresolved in the evidence provided.
