Journalist Soukaina Mansour Kawtharani killed in Tuesday's strike on Joun

Lebanese journalist Soukaina Mansour Kawtharani, her two children Reda and Sarah, and other family members were killed in an Israeli raid on a three-story residential building in Joun, Chouf. Kawtharani was a correspondent for the Hezbollah-affiliated Radio al-Nour, which announced her death on Wednesday.

The Israeli strike on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 12 killed 15 people, including eight women and four children, and wounded 12, the Health Ministry announced the following day. The village of Joun, in the Chouf, a region until now relatively spared by Israeli strikes, had already been bombed by Israel in September.

Joseph Qosseifi, President of the Lebanese Press Editors' Association, brought “this crime to the attention of international human rights organizations, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the General Federation of Arab Journalists and UNESCO,” according to a statement issued via the official National News Agency (NNA). “The Israeli enemy makes no distinction between civilians and combatants in its bombardments, violates every law, charter and pact, and speaks only the language of fire and blood,” it lamented.

According to Qosseifi, 12 members of the Lebanese press have been killed since the start of the war between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on Oct. 8, 2023. Our count, however, puts the number of journalists killed at 14. On Monday, another Al-Manar correspondent, Amine Chomer, was killed in a bombing raid on Saksakieh, along with many members of his family.