Palestinians fleeing north Gaza after Israeli troops raided al-Shifa hospital, move southward, in the central Gaza Strip, on March 18, 2024. (Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed strong condemnation regarding the detention of a team of Al Jazeera journalists, lead by correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul, by the Israeli army at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Monday.
Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of CPJ, emphasized the crucial role of journalists during a conflict, stating: “Journalists play an essential role in a war. They are the eyes and the ears that we need to document what’s happening and with every journalist killed, with every journalist arrested, our ability to understand what’s happening in Gaza diminishes significantly.”
Of all the conflicts and cases that the CPJ has documented, Ginsberg said, the war in Gaza is "the worst for journalists" and she warned the situation "is simply getting worse."
Regarding the attacks on media vehicles and equipment at al-Shifa Hospital, she remarked, “This looks like a deliberate attempt to prevent [the] assault on the hospital being documented” and pointed out that “there is a history of Israel targeting media facilities.”
The Israeli army had announced on Monday morning that it was carrying out a raid on al-Shifa Hospital, its second since the start of the war, “based on intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists." Later, the army claimed to have killed Hamas' head of internal security, a claim which has yet to be independently verified.
The army described the operation as precise, but the Gazan Health Ministry said that as a result of the operation, a huge fire had engulfed one of the health facility's buildings, trapping people inside and causing "deaths and injuries" among the thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter there.