In this file photo, Palestinians mourn local journalists Hassouna Saliem and Sari Mansour, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike at a hospital in the central Gaza Strip. (Photo by Reuters)

Gaza City, February 24 (RHC)-- Two more Palestinian journalists have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, pushing the death toll of press members targeted by Israel since October 7th to 132.   Israeli warplanes targeted the home of journalist Muhammad Tishreen Yaghi in the town of al-Zawayda in central Gaza Strip on Friday, according to Gaza media office. The attack also killed Yaghi’s wife and his children.

Journalist Musaab Abu Zayed, a presenter for the Holy Quran Radio in the Gaza Strip, was also killed in an airstrike on his home in the enclave. Further details were not immediately available.  The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in its annual report released on February 15 that seventy-two of the 99 journalists killed worldwide in 2023 were Palestinians reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza.

Killings of reporters would have dropped globally year-on-year had it not been for the deaths in the ongoing war on Gaza, the organization said.  “In December 2023, CPJ reported that more journalists were killed in the first three months of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” the CJP noted.

Jodie Ginsberg, president of the CPJ, said the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza is unprecedented in terms of the threat to journalists.  “What’s important to remember about this war is that Gazan journalists are the only journalists able to report on what’s happening inside Gaza. International journalists have not been able to get in, have not been allowed in, except on very, very controlled trips that are overseen by the Israeli army.

“So we are entirely reliant on those [Palestinian] journalists, who are risking their lives to bring us this story,” she stated.

Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm in the occupied territories in retaliation for the Tel Aviv regime’s incessant crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 29,514 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory. Another 69,616 individuals have sustained injuries as well.

The campaign has devastated large swathes of Gaza, destroyed hospitals and displaced half of its population of 2.4 million.   Israel has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.