Lebanon accused Israel of targeting journalists in a “deliberate” attack that killed three media workers in the country’s south on Friday, calling the incident a “war crime”.
Asked by AFP for comment on the strike, the Israeli military has not yet responded.
Israel has been at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon since late last month, in a bid to secure its northern border after nearly a year of cross-border fire from the Iran-backed armed group.
Hezbollah began strikes on Israel in support of its ally Hamas following the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in its history.
Pro-Iran Lebanese television channel Al Mayadeen said cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda were killed in the strike on a journalists’ residence in Hasbaya, south Lebanon.
Another TV outlet, Al-Manar, run by Hezbollah, said video journalist Wissam Qassem was also killed in the strike on a bungalow located in a resort that several media organisations covering the Israel-Hezbollah war had rented out.
After the strike a car bearing a “press” marking was crushed under debris. Roofing tiles were blown off, and rubble littered the inside of the bungalow and its surroundings.
‘We were asleep’
Journalists from other media organisations were also sleeping nearby when the strike hit, in an area outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.
“I woke up to the whistling sound of a missile and found my door burst open while thick smoke rose from the garden. I thought there was a fire,” Sky News Arabia correspondent Darine El Helwe told AFP.
“We were asleep in our rooms, without our bulletproof vests and helmets,” she said.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the strike “targeting journalists” was among the “war crimes committed by the Israeli enemy”.
He also said the attack was “deliberate”.
Earlier, Information Minister Ziad Makary said Israel had “waited for the journalists’ nighttime break” to strike while they slept.
“This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with prior planning and design, as there were 18 journalists there representing seven media institutions,” Makary wrote on X.
International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP that journalists are “protected persons”.
“And you know the approach of applying propaganda is not eliminating this protection,” she added.
Rescuers killed
After nearly a year of war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s attack, Israel expanded its focus to Lebanon last month, launching a massive bombing campaign targeting mainly Hezbollah strongholds across the country and sending in ground troops on September 30.
The war in Lebanon has killed at least 1,580 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Lebanon’s health minister said Friday that 163 rescuers and health workers have been killed in a year of cross-border fire.
Israel’s military on Friday said it had struck more than 200 militant targets in Lebanon over the past day, as it announced the deaths of five soldiers in fighting in south Lebanon.
It said it had conducted strikes on “several weapons storage facilities and command centres” in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold.
The military also confirmed it struck a northern border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, accusing Hezbollah of moving weapons through it.
United Nations peacekeepers said that Israeli soldiers fired at one of their observation posts in south Lebanon this week, adding the security situation was “extremely challenging”.
Gaza strikes
In Gaza, the civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes hit two homes at dawn on Friday in Khan Yunis, the Palestinian territory’s main southern city.
According to agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal, 14 people — nine of them children — were killed in a strike on a family’s home, and another six were killed in a separate raid.
The Israeli military said that “a number of terrorists were eliminated” in southern Gaza.
Hamas’s attack which triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 251 people hostage, 97 of whom are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,847 people, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the United Nations considers reliable.
Multiple bids to stop the war have failed, though Israel’s key backer the United States has voiced hope that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week could serve as an opening for a deal.
A senior Hamas official told AFP that the group was ready to stop fighting if Israel commits to a ceasefire, after a delegation from its Doha-based leadership discussed a possible truce with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he welcomed mediator Egypt’s readiness to reach a deal “for the release of the hostages” held by militants in Gaza.
Netanyahu directed the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency to leave for Qatar on Sunday to “advance a series of initiatives that are on the agenda”, his office said.
‘Time is running out’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged Friday to work with “real urgency” for a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon, urging Israel to spare civilians, but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
On Thursday, he met with the leaders of Qatar on his 11th trip to the region since the start of the Gaza war.
During the trip, which comes less than two weeks before US elections, Blinken said mediators would explore new options for a Gaza truce.
Israeli and US officials as well as some analysts said Sinwar had been a key obstacle to a deal which would release the hostages still held in Gaza.
An Israeli group representing families of hostages called on Netanyahu and Hamas to reach a deal.
“Time is running out,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.