Three journalists were killed in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon when a drone fired multiple missiles at their car, their broadcasters and authorities said, drawing condemnation from the Lebanese presidency, which called the killings a violation of international law, The Guardian reports.
Ali Shoeib, of Hezbollah-owned al-Manar television, and Fatima Ftouni and her brother and cameraman Mohammed Ftouni of al-Mayadeen media, were killed in the attack, their organisations and the Lebanese army confirmed.
Shoeib was a well-known war correspondent in Lebanon, where he had reported for al-Manar for almost three decades. Journalists across the country expressed their condolences.
Reporting from the front lines
The Israeli military claimed that Shoeib was the target of the attack, whom it said was a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan unit – the pro-Iranian armed group’s most elite unit specializing in cross-border attacks. They said his contacts with senior Hezbollah figures, as well as his work documenting the positions of Israeli forces, were evidence that he was a military member of the group. They did not comment on the killing of two other journalists in the vehicle. Ftouni had also been reporting from the front lines of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in recent days. Her family had been killed in Israeli strikes a few weeks earlier. Eighteen months earlier, she and her colleagues had been hit by an Israeli bomb while sleeping in a hotel in southern Lebanon; Ftouni survived, but two of her colleagues did not.
The three journalists were hit while driving in Jizzine, a district in southern Lebanon far from the front lines.
Similar claims for journalists in Gaza
The Israeli military has made similar claims for several journalists killed in Gaza, whom it says were acting as Hamas operatives, including Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera correspondent. Israel has killed more than 220 journalists since 2023, including nine while working in Lebanon.
Under international law, journalists are considered civilians, regardless of political affiliation, and targeting them constitutes a war crime. Eight of the nine journalists killed by Israel in Lebanon while on duty worked for media outlets affiliated with Hezbollah, and analysts believe the killings are part of an Israeli strategy to target the group’s civilian facilities.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun issued a statement condemning the attack, saying: “Once again, Israeli aggression violates the most basic rules of international law, international humanitarian law and the laws of war, by targeting journalists, who are ultimately civilians carrying out their professional duties.”
