Palestinian journalist Abdullah Shakshak (center) (Photo via social media)

Gaza City, September 18 (RHC)-- The government media office in the Gaza Strip says another Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in the besieged coastal sliver, taking the death toll to 173 since the beginning of the bloody Israeli war last October.

Abdullah Shakshak, who worked with several Arab media outlets, was killed in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday afternoon, when an Israeli military quadcopter launched an airstrike.

The Gaza media office in a statement condemned Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists and called on the international community to hold the regime accountable for “crimes against journalists.”

A group of nearly 90 journalists in Germany has called for the protection of their colleagues in the Gaza Strip, where more than 170 journalists have been killed by Israel since the start of the regime’s genocidal war against the besieged territory.

The statement also urged the international community, international organizations, and organizations concerned with the media industry and journalism to “deter the occupying Tel Aviv regime, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to stop the genocide and the killing and assassination of Palestinian journalists.”

Journalists operating in the Palestinian territory are faced with increased dangers as they report on the conflict amidst Israeli ground assaults and airstrikes, disrupted communications, supply shortages, and power outages.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year, after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.

So far, the Israeli war on Gaza has killed at least 41,206 Palestinians, most of them women, children, and adolescents, and injured 95,337 others.