At least 19 people were killed on Monday when Israeli missile strikes hit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. Among the dead were four journalists, marking one of the deadliest single attacks on media workers since the beginning of the war. The strike, which witnesses said came as rescuers and reporters rushed to the site of an earlier explosion, was captured live on camera.
Al-Jazeera confirmed that photographer Mohammad Salama, who worked for the broadcaster, was among those killed. Gaza’s Government Media Office also named Hussam al-Masri, a photojournalist who worked for Reuters; Mariam Abu Daqqa, a journalist who contributed to outlets including The Independent Arabic and the Associated Press; and Moaz Abu Taha, who worked for NBC News.
Health officials reported that a rescue worker was also among those killed in the strikes. Reuters said that cameraman Hussam al-Masri died in the first strike, and photographer Hatem Khaled, also a Reuters contractor, was wounded in the second. Reuters’ live video feed from the hospital, operated by al-Masri, abruptly cut off at the moment of the initial blast.
“We are devastated to learn of the death of Reuters contractor Hussam al-Masri and injuries to another of our contractors, Hatem Khaled, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser hospital in Gaza today,” a Reuters spokesperson said in a statement. “We are urgently seeking more information and have asked authorities in Gaza and Israel to help us get urgent medical assistance for Hatem.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular leftist faction, condemned the bombing, describing it as proof of “the absolute brutality and sadism of the occupation.” The group said the attack deliberately targeted “patients and civilians, followed by ambulance crews, civil defense personnel, and journalists, live on air.” The PFLP added that Israel and its allies, including the U.S. government under President Donald Trump, should be held “fully responsible for this organized crime.”
The hospital strike followed a weekend of intense attacks across Gaza, including bombings in Gaza City on Sunday that killed at least 51 people, most of them civilians.
International human rights and medical groups denounced the attack and linked it to a wider pattern of Israeli strikes on healthcare facilities. “This is what a live-streamed genocide looks like,” said Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns for Medical Aid for Palestinians. “These are not ‘incidents,’ they are systematic murder.”
Hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law, and attacks on them are classified as war crimes. Yet rights advocates noted that Israel has repeatedly struck hospitals across Gaza. “Targeting of Gaza’s hospitals continues, because impunity persists,” Talbot added.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also condemned the deaths. Following a separate strike earlier this month that killed five journalists near Al-Shifa Hospital, CPJ regional director Sara Qudah warned, “Israel is murdering the messengers.”
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate called Monday’s bombing “an open war against free media, with the aim of terrorising journalists and preventing them from fulfilling their professional duty of exposing its crimes to the world.”
Mustafa Barghouti, a physician, politician, and General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Israel “is trying to silence any reporting of its war crimes in Gaza.”
The toll on journalists in Gaza has reached staggering levels. According to estimates cited by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, more than 240 reporters have been killed by Israeli fire since the war began on October 7, 2023. Other monitoring groups put the figure even higher, at 244 killed.
The Israeli military and the Prime Minister’s Office offered no immediate comment on the strikes.
Mourners carried the bodies of the slain reporters through Khan Younis after the attack. Photographs showed the funeral procession for Hussam al-Masri, his coffin draped in cloth as colleagues and family members grieved.
“This is not an isolated tragedy,” the PFLP said, calling the Nasser Hospital bombing another chapter in what they described as a systematic campaign to eliminate Gaza’s medical and media sectors.
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