Israeli forces kill 3 journalists in Lebanon, raid hospital in north Gaza

JERUSALEM – Israeli forces killed three journalists in Lebanon and raided a hospital in northern Gaza early Friday, attacks condemned by press freedom groups and medical aid organizations, as the military pressed ahead with offensives in both places despite a U.S. push to end the fighting.

In Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike hit a residence where journalists were staying in the southern town of Hasbaya. The strike landed without warning at 3:30 a.m., killing two cameramen and a broadcast engineer who worked for Hezbollah-aligned outlets. In Gaza, Israeli troops stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, according to the local health ministry, which said two children in the intensive care unit were killed after the generators cut.

“We have lost touch with the personnel there,” the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, posted on X. “This development is deeply disturbing,” he added, “given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there.”

The Israeli military said Friday that it was “looking into” the strike on the media workers in Lebanon, and later issued a statement saying that the guesthouse, where 18 journalists were staying, was a “Hezbollah military structure.” In a separate statement on northern Gaza, the military said its forces were “operating in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area.”

Israel invaded Lebanon on Oct. 1 and is engaged in heavy fighting with Hezbollah militants in the south. It has also carried out a wide-ranging aerial campaign, striking targets across the country, including in the capital, Beirut.

In announcements Thursday and Friday, the military said 10 soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon.

Three soldiers also died Friday in northern Gaza, the military said. Its forces launched a new offensive there Oct. 5, pummeling the region with air and artillery strikes, blocking off food and aid, and displacing tens of thousands of people, in what Israel says is an attempt to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in the area.

But human rights groups, aid organizations and the United Nations have all warned that the operation in Gaza was causing a humanitarian catastrophe and could empty the north of all Palestinians.

“The darkest moment of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Friday.

“The Israeli military is effectively subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and risk of starvation, as well as being forced to choose between mass displacement and being trapped in an active conflict zone,” he said.

Late on Thursday, just ahead of the raid, the United Nations and other aid groups evacuated 23 patients from Kamal Adwan, an effort that took around 20 hours from start to finish, the WHO said.

“We witnessed last night thousands of women and children moving south,” said Georgios Petropoulos, a Gaza-based official for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. There “were very few men and adolescent boys among them, we saw the men being screened,” he said.

The attacks in Gaza and Lebanon came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a multistop tour in the region, in which he pressed Israel on aid to the north and announced a new round of Gaza cease-fire talks in Qatar. On Friday, he met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in London.

“We have a sense of real urgency in getting to a diplomatic resolution” to end the conflict in Lebanon, Blinken said.

As he visited Qatar on Thursday, he was asked about recent Israeli allegations against six Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza. The Israeli military accused the journalists of ties to Palestinian militant groups.

“Far too many [journalists] have lost their lives in Gaza,” he said. “And we’re equally determined that journalists be protected.”

But the deaths of more journalists in Lebanon on Friday added to the growing count of media workers killed in the region since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, setting off the wider conflict.

“The enemy targeted them in their sleep,” Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary wrote Friday on X.

The strike killed cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Muhammad Reda, both of whom worked for Al-Mayadeen. Wissam Qasim, a cameraman for the Hezbollah-affiliated outlet Al-Manar, was also killed, Al-Mayadeen reported.

The attack was carried out while “terrorists were located inside the structure,” the Israeli military said in a statement. The military went on to say that “several hours after the strike, reports were received that journalists had been hit.”

“The incident is under review,” the statement said.

Muhammad Farhat, a reporter for local TV station Aljadeed, said in an interview that he was staying in another residence in the same compound where the journalists were killed Friday. The compound had eight bungalows in total, all of which were occupied by journalists from local and international media.

Farhat said he awoke to the sound of Israeli jets and that seconds later, two missiles hit the bungalow next to his. The impact of the strike caused the roof of his bungalow to collapse, Farhat said. When he got outside, he saw that the residence next door had “disappeared” with the force of the strike.

Photographs from the scene showed a flattened building and a heavily damaged truck with a prominent “PRESS” marking on it.

Ali Shoeib, a correspondent for Al Manar who worked with Qasim, told his viewers: “I am now filming myself because the cameraman who accompanied me for days and nights and months is now a martyr.”

In a statement, Al-Mayadeen said it holds Israel fully responsible for the deaths, calling the attack “an aggression on all press crews.”

Farhat said journalists had coordinated their movements with the Lebanese army and the United Nations.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which tracks deaths among reporters worldwide, said Friday that 131 journalists and media workers have been killed in the region over the past year – including 123 Palestinians, two Israelis and three Lebanese.

CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said the organization was “deeply outraged by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on journalists.”

“Deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime under international law,” Martinez de la Serna said. “This attack must be independently investigated and the perpetrators must be held to account.”

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El Chamaa and Loveluck reported from Beirut and Jeong from Seoul. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Cate Brown in Washington contributed to this report.