Beirut, October 24 (RHC)-- The Israeli regime has carried out an airstrike against the office of Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network in the country’s capital Beirut.
The attack struck the building in the city’s Jnah neighborhood on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding five others, including a child, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The network said it had fortunately evacuated the building last October after the regime notably escalated its deadly attacks against Lebanon.
Reacting to the attack, al-Mayadeen denounced the regime for targeting a well-known media outlet, but stressed that it would continue to report the truth amid the escalation.
Mahmoud al-Mardawi, a senior official with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, also condemned the atrocity, hailing the network’s “pioneering work in revealing the truth.”
“Al-Mayadeen, which dismantles the narrative of Zionist sympathizers, is a fighter channel in confronting the enemy, which seeks to cover up the truth and present misleading narratives,” he added.
The Palestinian resistance Mujahideen Movement also condemend the attack, considering it to be “part of the systematic Zionist campaign targeting honorable free media outlets.”
The attack “is clear evidence that the channel is on the right path, and it stands as a badge of honor and pride for this resistance channel,” it noed. “Despite the unlimited support the Zionist narrative receives from Western media machinery, the enemy has failed to suppress or obscure the voice and image of truth.”
As part of its campaign against the outspoken network, the regime ordered suspension of its operations in the occupied Palestinian territories last November, identifying it as a “threat to Israel’s security.”
In August, the regime renewed the ban and ordered confiscation of the network’s equipment and blocking of its websites.
Since October 7 last year, when it launched a genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and intensified its deadly aggression on Lebanon, the regime has been pursuing a policy of blocking media coverage that could expose its atrocities.
Ever since, it has killed more than 170 journalists in the coastal sliver and Lebanon, including al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Me'mari.
Last month, the network also announced the death of its journalist Hadi al-Sayyed in an Israeli airstrike that had targeted his home in southern Lebanon. A journalist with Al-Mayadeen Media Network, Hadi al-Sayyed, is among the more than 550 people killed in the indiscriminate Israeli bombings in Lebanon.
In January, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a human rights and press freedom group, said the war on Gaza “is more deadly to journalists than any previous war." It said the brutal military onslaught had, until that month, “damaged or destroyed an estimated 48 media facilities” in the coastal sliver.
As of August 14, 2024, the CPJ’s investigations showed 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 40,000 killed since October 2023.
Reporters Without Borders has also denounced the regime for intentionally targeting Palestinian and Lebanese journalists.
