Hamas blasts Israel’s ‘cowardly’ assassination of prominent journalist
Hamas has vociferously condemned the Israeli regime’s targeted killing of a noted and highly popular Palestinian journalist as a “cowardly assassination” and an act of “sadism,” lambasting Tel Aviv for systematically silencing the mediums of truth.
Hassan Eslayeh, a respected freelance photojournalist, was receiving medical treatment at the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday after surviving a previous Israeli airstrike on April 7 that had targeted a media tent housing journalists.
He had been documenting the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on Gaza as well as the historic operation by Hamas and fighters from its fellow Gaza-based resistance movements that targeted the occupied Palestinian territories in the run-up to the war.
The victim had amassed a substantial following on social media platforms on the back of his no-holds-barred mission to document facts on the ground.
The Israeli military claimed responsibility for the airstrike that led to his assassination, alleging, however, that it had targeted a Hamas’ “command-and-control center” within the hospital complex. The regime has unexceptionally provided the so-called explanation following its recurrent mass-casualty attacks on civilians.
Hamas and independent observers have dismissed these claims, asserting that Eslayeh was a civilian journalist with no affiliation to any resistance group.
The resistance movement further described the attack as a “flagrant violation of all international and humanitarian laws,” saying the Israeli regime had suffered moral and media bankruptcy.
The group, meanwhile, called on the international community, including the United Nations and press organizations, to take urgent action to stop the regime’s war crimes against Palestinian journalists and slap sanctions on Israeli officials.
The filmmakers of a new documentary about the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh say they have identified the Israeli soldier who sniped her in the West Bank city of Jenin in 2022.
Since the onset of the war, over 215 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces, most of whom have perished in Gaza.
