Gaza City, August 21 (RHC)-- Another Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli strike in the besieged Gaza Strip, as the number of journalists killed since the start of the current Israeli campaign of genocide has reached 170, the media office says.

Palestinian photographer and reporter Hamza Abdul Rahman Murtaja lost his life on Tuesday, when an Israeli aircraft dropped a bomb on the second floor of the Mustafa Hafiz School building housing scores of displaced people, the Gaza Media Office said.

Palestinian journalist Hamza Abdul Rahman Murtaja    (Photo by the Palestinian Information Center)

In its statement, the office added that Murtaja had worked for several different media outlets, calling on “the international community and international organizations and those related to journalistic work in the world to deter the [Israeli] occupation and prosecute it in international courts” for the killing of journalists in Gaza.

According to figures provided by the Gaza Media Office, Murtaja death brings the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army in the war-torn Gaza Strip since October 7 to 170.

The Israeli bombing of the Gaza school killed 12 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others.

Journalists working in Palestinian territories face heightened risks while covering the conflict, contending with Israeli ground assaults and airstrikes, interrupted communications, supply shortages, and power outages.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel’s military campaign on the Gaza Strip has become “the bloodiest for journalists” since the committee began documenting journalist killings worldwide in 1992.

Experts of the United Nations have previously warned about “the extraordinarily high numbers of journalists and media workers who have been killed, attacked, injured and detained in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”