The International Criminal Court (ICC) has confirmed that it is investigating potential crimes against journalists amid the ongoing relentless Israeli ground and air strikes against the besieged Gaza Strip, where dozens of reporters have been killed.
Media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in November that it had filed a complaint with the Hague-based ICC regarding the Israeli regime’s war crimes over the deaths of journalists trying to cover the Gaza war.
“The office of prosecutor Karim Khan has assured the organization that crimes against journalists are included in its investigation into Palestine,” the NGO announced on Monday.
The court confirmed the statement on Tuesday, saying, “The ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine concerns crimes committed within the Court’s jurisdiction since June 13, 2014.”
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lately said the first 10 weeks of the Gaza war have been the deadliest recorded for journalists, with the most journalists killed in a single year in one location.
The group, a nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, noted that most of the journalists and media workers killed in the war were Palestinian.
It added that it was “particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”
CPJ said it was further investigating the circumstances of all journalist deaths. It said such efforts in Gaza were hampered by widespread destruction and by the killing of journalists’ family members, who typically serve as sources for investigators looking into how the journalists died.
According to the latest figures, nearly 110 journalists have lost their lives in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli regime launched its military aggression against the territory in early October last year.
On Sunday, Hamza al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, and his colleague Mustafa Thuraya, a video stringer for AFP news agency, were killed when an Israeli missile hit their vehicle in Khan Younis. They were both freelancers. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded.
Israel waged the war on the strip on October 7 after the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
At least 23,210 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the war, and more than 59,167 individuals injured.
Tel Aviv has also imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
