The Israeli Assassination of Journalist Anas al-Sharif and Five Colleagues in Gaza City

“We understand these are our last days.”

Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif reports near the Arab Ahli (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City on October 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

GAZA CITY—The prominent Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif was buried in Gaza City on Monday, a broken slab of rock used as a headstone, one day after his assassination by the Israeli military. Five other journalists —four from Al Jazeera, Mohammed Qraiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Noufal, and one from media outlet Sahat, Mohammed Al-Khalidi—were killed alongside him and also laid to rest.

All six were killed on Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike on their media tent outside Al-Shifa hospital in what the Israeli military proudly proclaimed was an assassination targeting al-Sharif. Israel has now killed 238 journalists in Gaza, according to the Government Media Office.

The grave of Anas al-Sharif in Gaza City. August 11, 2025. (Screenshot of video by Abdel Qader Sabbah)

At just 28 years old, Anas had emerged as the most recognized Palestinian journalist still alive and reporting from Gaza. He remained in the north from the beginning of Israel’s onslaught of the enclave and became a near-constant presence on television and online, reporting almost every day on airstrikes, shelling, massacres, displacement, famine, death, and dismemberment—while relaying glimpses of hope and accounts of Palestinian resilience whenever he could.

Barely an hour before he was killed, al-Sharif warned of the impending Israeli invasion. “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased—and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop,” he wrote. “Silence is complicity.”

His last post, just minutes before he was killed, warned that Gaza City was under intense bombing: “Relentless bombardment… For two hours, the Israeli aggression has intensified on Gaza City.” The Israeli security cabinet last week approved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans for a full-scale invasion to “take control” of Gaza City in yet another escalation of Israel’s 22-month genocidal assault.

Israel’s murder of the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City is seen by Palestinian journalists as an opening salvo in the coming invasion and a warning to the remaining journalists in the city—signaling that Israel can and will eliminate the most prominent journalistic voices on the ground.

“We fear that this could be a prelude to massacres in Gaza City, especially after the occupation's threat to completely occupy the Gaza Strip and completely destroy Gaza City in particular,” Kamer Labad, a correspondent for Al-Aqsa TV, told Drop Site on Monday, as he stood in the graveyard while his colleagues were being buried. “They do not want these pictures to be broadcast, and it’s also a clear threat to other journalists not to convey the voices of Gaza to the outside world.”

The funeral procession of Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues in Gaza City. August 11, 2025. (Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah)

Facing no consequences for its actions—other than occasional words of condemnation from foreign governments and human rights organizations—the Israeli military has acted with increasing levels of brazenness in its killing of journalists in Gaza over the past 22 months. “Despite warnings by international organizations to Israel not to kill Anas al-Sharif or any other journalists, they did it, the Israeli occupation forces killed the Al Jazeera crew and other journalists, simply because they can do that and nobody can curb them,” Sami Abu Salem, a member of the Palestine Journalist Syndicate, told Drop Site as he stood in the cemetery in Gaza City on Monday. “I think the Israeli occupation forces are very annoyed because the truth is coming from Gaza through Palestinian journalists.”

Initially, Israeli forces would deny that they killed journalists or would claim their deaths were the unintended consequences of the war, clinically known as “collateral damage.” They eventually began to claim that some of the slain journalists were militants after they killed them, as was the case with Hamza al-Dahdouh in January 2024, and with Ismail al-Ghoul in July 2024, among others. None of the so-called evidence the Israeli military produced to back up these claims was close to credible, and in many cases, the evidence was outright ludicrous. After killing al-Ghoul, they released a document claiming that he had received a military ranking from Hamas in 2007, when al-Ghoul was 10 years old.

In October 2024, they went a step further and placed six Al Jazeera journalists on a hit list, including Al-Sharif, claiming they were militants while openly threatening them. Hossam Shabbat, a Drop Site contributor, was named on the list and assassinated in March. The following day, the Israeli military bragged about his killing and said, “Don’t let the press vest fool you.” In April, they admitted to bombing a hospital to kill journalist Hassan Eslaih, who was recovering from his wounds in a previous assassination attempt barely a month earlier in an airstrike on a media tent outside Nasser hospital that killed two other journalists.

Al-Sharif had been directly and repeatedly threatened by the Israeli military for many months. In November 2023, he reported receiving multiple calls from Israeli army officers ordering him to cease coverage and to leave northern Gaza. He said he also received messages and voice notes on WhatsApp from Israeli forces disclosing that they knew his location. Less than three weeks after he was called by the Israeli army, his family home in the Jabalia refugee camp was bombed, killing his 90-year-old father, Jamal al-Sharif. The threats only escalated from there, with the Israeli military spokesperson posting videos taunting him online.

On July 23, the Israeli military spokesperson reposted a video online accusing al-Sharif of being a member of Hamas’s military wing after he reported on the famine spreading in Gaza. Al-Sharif repeatedly called on the world to protect him and other journalists in Gaza. “After I reported live on civilians collapsing from hunger, I was directly targeted with public incitement by the army’s spokesperson,” he wrote three weeks ago. “This is an attempt to silence us—and to cover up a genocide unfolding in real time. I call on international officials, human rights defenders, and global media to speak out and share this message. Your voice can help stop the targeting of journalists and protect the truth.” He characterized Israel’s threats as “Silence or Death,” and he vowed not to be silent.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement the next day saying it was gravely concerned for Al-Sharif’s safety and said he was being “targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign,” while the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Irene Khan called Israel’s threats “a blatant attempt to endanger his life and silence his reporting on the genocide in Gaza.”

Israel paid no heed, assassinated him, and proclaimed it had “struck the terrorist Anas Al-Sharif, who posed as a journalist for the Al Jazeera network.”

Footage of the aftermath of the attack is horrific. The mangled corpses of Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh can be seen being pulled out of the wreckage while their colleagues scream over them.

Journalist Abdel Qader Sabbah, who provided reporting from Gaza City for this article and was a close friend of al-Sharif, managed to keep filming as he came upon their bodies. Sabbah had been with al-Sharif just two days prior, helping him to set up a live shot to go on air. He said of his conversation with al-Sharif that, “We understand these are our last days.”

The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the media tent outside Shia hospital in Gaza City. August 10, 2025. (Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah)

“All the journalists, or dear colleagues, who tried to convey this truth—the occupation killed them after threats. It threatened and carried out its threats. No one can deter it, it does what it wants, it kills,” Sabbah later said in a social media post on Monday. “Everyone tries to stop the occupation from killing journalists and colleagues…But there is no deterrent, rather, there's growing insolence.”

He added, “But we can say that no matter how much you kill and assassinate—and this is what I heard today from all the journalists at the cemetery this morning—they will continue. What you want to achieve by silencing us or preventing the truth, that will not be possible for you. We are all on the same path. 237 journalists—even if they become 500—we will continue. Don't expect any one of us to stop or to give up the message just because you killed one of us.”

Despite the brazen nature of Al-Sharif’s killing, the reaction and coverage from western media institutions remained muted or otherwise repeated Israel’s absurd justifications. Reuters’s headline parroted Israel’s false claims: “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader.” Canada’s National Post ran a headline based solely on Israel’s statement that Al-Sharif orchestrated rocket attacks for Hamas. The BBC in its own coverage lent credence to Israel’s justification for Al-Sharif’s assassination. Today, protesters gathered outside the BBC’s offices in London for a vigil and presented a banner that read “You killed Anas.”

The National Press Club in Washington, D.C., said it was “saddened and troubled” by al-Sharif’s killing and issued a boilerplate call for “a thorough and transparent examination of the circumstances surrounding al-Sharif's death” despite the fact that Israel had openly threatened al-Sharif for months and publicly announced it had killed him.

Like journalists in Gaza before him, including his close friend, Hossam Shabbat, al-Sharif was well aware he would likely be killed and pre-wrote a posthumous letter in April to be published after his death. We are republishing it in full:

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.

I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.

I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.

I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.

I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting.

O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.

Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

Anas Jamal Al-Sharif