A Palestinian television channel says five of its journalists were killed in an Israeli strike in the central Gaza Strip.
They were in a Quds Today van parked outside al-Awda hospital, where the wife of one of the journalists was about to give birth, in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the country.
The station posted video of what it says is the vehicle on fire with a “press” sign on the rear doors.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had targeted “Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists” and that measures had been taken to avoid harming civilians.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “devastated by these reports”.
“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” he said.
The BBC was unable to verify either side’s claims, with international media blocked by Israel from freely entering and working on the ground in Gaza.
Quds Today is affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an armed group that participated in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. This unprecedented attack sparked the war in Gaza. The television channel would benefit from funding from the group.
The Israeli military named the five people killed as Ibrahim Jamal Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali; Faisal Abdallah Muhammad Abu Qamsan; Mohammed Ayad Khamis al-Ladaa; Ayman Nihad Abd Alrahman Jadi; and Fadi Ihab Muhammad Ramadan Hassouna.
It says “intelligence from multiple sources confirmed” that all were PIJ members, and that a list found during an operation in Gaza “explicitly identified four” as such.
In a statement, Quds Today said the men “were killed while carrying out their media and humanitarian duty.”
As of December 20, at least 133 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the war, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists, according to CPJ.
The organization calls for accountability for Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army.
In another development, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital on the northern edge of Gaza said on Thursday that around 50 people, including five staff members, had been killed in an Israeli strike on a building near the hospital. Among them, a pediatrician and two paramedics.
At least five other people were also reported killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza City on Wednesday.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency and Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also said another 20 people were injured in the city’s al-Zeitoun neighborhood.
The Israeli military has not commented on the reported bombings.
Meanwhile, the father of a two-week-old Palestinian baby girl has told the BBC how his little girl froze to death in a tent in Gaza – the third child in a week to die in similar conditions.
Mahmoud Ismail Al-Faseeh said he woke up to intense cold and found his daughter, Sila, suffering from convulsions. She was rushed to hospital but died of hypothermia, the head of the pediatric department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told the Associated Press news agency.
The family was sheltering in the al-Mawasi area on the Gaza coast, a strip of land designated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a humanitarian zone but which was hit by airstrikes.
Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatrics department, said two other babies – one three days old and the other one month old – had been brought in in the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.
Hopes for progress toward a ceasefire in recent days have begun to fade, with Hamas and Israel blaming each other.
Hamas accused the Israeli government of imposing “new conditions” which it said were delaying the agreement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the group was reneging on agreements already reached regarding a possible ceasefire.
The latest statements mark a notable change in tone on both sides following optimistic signals.
The Israeli army launched airstrikes and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack last year. Around 1,200 people were killed in the attack and another 251 were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
More than 45,000 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Nearly two million people, or 90% of the population, have been displaced, according to the UN.
Additional reporting by Jaroslav Lukiv.
