DUBAI, January 6. /TASS/. Palestinian writer, poet and journalist Mohammad Hijazi was killed in an Israeli air raid on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, taking the total number of media workers killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since October 7, 2023 to 220, Al Jazeera reported.
The TV channel cited a statement from the Gaza Ministry of Health that Hijazi was among nearly 90 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks across the embattled enclave over the weekend.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate condemned the ongoing systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces. "The Israeli military carried out 84 violations and crimes against Palestinian journalists during the previous month. The majority of these incidents occurred in the Gaza Strip, where 10 journalists were killed," the WAFA news agency quoted the syndicate as saying. According to the organization, the Israeli side continues the "use of various forms of violence and intimidation against journalists, including direct threats with weapons, exposure to toxic tear gas, unjust trials, financial fines, travel restrictions, and attempts to run over journalists."
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza-based Palestinian radical group Hamas staged a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, killing residents of border settlements and seizing more than 240 hostages. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel has declared a state of war readiness; announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians; and began delivering air strikes on the enclave and certain parts of Lebanon and Syria, followed by a ground operation in the enclave. Clashes are underway in the West Bank as well.