Investigations by two news organizations and two human rights groups made public on Thursday say that it was Israeli tank shells that in October killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists in southern Lebanon. <\/p>\n
The reports by\u00a0Reuters,\u00a0AFP,\u00a0Amnesty International, and\u00a0Human Rights Watch\u00a0drew on forensic analysis, witness testimony\u00a0and interviews with government officials, lawyers\u00a0and medical professionals. <\/p>\n
Eylon Levy, a spokesperson for the Israeli government, said Thursday that he was \u201cnot familiar\u201d with the new reports. \u201cThe guiding principle in Israel\u2019s campaign against Hamas is we uphold the principles of international law regarding proportionality, necessity, distinction,\u201d he said. \u201cWe target Hamas, we do not target civilians.\u201d <\/p>\n
IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht on October 14 called Abdallah\u2019s death \u201ca tragic thing,\u201d\u00a0without naming him directly or acknowledging Israel\u2019s involvement.\u00a0The same day, the IDF said: \u201cA report was received that during the incident, journalists were injured in the area. The incident is under review.\u201d <\/p>\n
AFP and HRW claim in their reports that the strike was a \u201cdeliberate,\u201d targeted attack by Israel on the journalists. In a statement to Reuters, Hecht said, \u201cWe don\u2019t target journalists.\u201d He did not provide further comment, the news agency reported. <\/p>\n
Abdallah, 37, was killed and six other reporters were wounded\u00a0while filming the Israeli border from southern Lebanon. AFP photographer Christina Assi\u00a0had her leg amputated and\u00a0remains in the hospital, according to AFP. <\/p>\n
After analysis of weapon fragments found at the scene, the reports say the journalists were killed and wounded by a 120 mm tank round of Israeli origin \u201cthat is not used by any other groups in the region,\u201d AFP adds, fired from a little over one kilometer from the teams\u2019 position. <\/p>\n
Al Jazeera has accused Israel\u2019s military of \u201cdeliberately targeting the journalists to silence the media,\u201d saying the attacks are a part of \u201ca pattern of \u2018repeated atrocities\u2019 against journalists.\u201d <\/p>\n
Amnesty International\u2019s investigation did not find \u201cany indication that there were any fighters or military objectives at the site of the strikes.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIsraeli forces had observation towers, ground elements, and air assets deployed to closely monitor the border. All of this should have provided sufficient information to Israeli forces that these were journalists and civilians and not a military target,\u201d Amnesty said\u00a0in its report. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur investigation into the incident uncovers chilling evidence pointing to an attack on a group of international journalists who were carrying out their work by reporting on hostilities. Direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks are absolutely prohibited by international humanitarian law and can amount to war crimes,\u201d said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International\u2019s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe strikes were deliberate and targeted,\u201d AFP\u00a0said in its report.\u00a0AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said in the report,\u00a0\u201cAFP has been very clear that we will take all judicial avenues that we deem relevant and possible to ensure that we can get justice for Christina and Issam.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking Thursday in Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Abdallah\u2019s death should be investigated. Blinken said it was his understanding that Israel had begun such an investigation and stressed the importance of seeing it through. <\/p>\n
A Pentagon spokeswoman said earlier that the agency had not conducted its own assessment of Abdallah\u2019s death but it continued to urge Israel to protect innocent civilians, including members of the press. <\/p>\n\n
Investigations by two news organizations and two human rights groups made public on Thursday say that it was Israeli tank shells that in October killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists in southern Lebanon. The reports by\u00a0Reuters,\u00a0AFP,\u00a0Amnesty International, and\u00a0Human Rights Watch\u00a0drew on forensic analysis, witness testimony\u00a0and interviews with government officials, lawyers\u00a0and medical <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}