The Gaza Media Office and Reporters Without Borders say there are indications it was a targeted attack.
Three journalists were injured, one seriously, in an Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Authorities in the besieged strip say it was a targeted attack.
According to the broadcaster, Sami Shehadeh, a journalist for Turkish broadcaster TRT, had his foot amputated after he was injured in Friday’s attack. TRT’s Arabi correspondent Sami Berhum was also injured.
“The vehicle of a TRT Arabi team [TRT’s Arabic-language channel] “This was the target of an attack by the Israeli army,” the broadcaster said.
TRT Director General Zahid Sobaci called the attack “Israeli brutality” and said it crossed all “moral, legal or humanitarian boundaries.”
Lying on the floor of Al-Aqsa Hospital in the Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, Shehadeh told an AFP reporter he was “far from the danger zone.” “I was even surrounded by people and journalists” when the attack occurred.
“We fired when an attacker targeted us. I don’t know if it was a rocket or a tank. I saw that my leg was amputated,” he said.
“I wore a press vest and a helmet and it was clear, even to blind people, that I was a journalist.”
“Journalists specifically targeted”
The Gaza Media Office condemned the Israeli attack on the vehicle carrying the three journalists.
“We strongly condemn the ongoing attacks by Israeli occupation forces on journalists and media teams,” it said in a statement.
Israeli forces “deliberately kill and wound journalists to intimidate, threaten and prevent reporters from carrying out their duties and to suppress the truth,” it said.
Jonathan Dagher, the Middle East director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said reports of attacks, injuries and killings of journalists in Gaza by Israel have become “so commonplace.”
“We have had to report them almost every day for the last six months. “This is just the latest attack, it is terrible… it is unacceptable,” he told Al Jazeera.
Dagher described the attack as “unprovoked” and said there was enough evidence to suggest the vehicle was targeted.
More than 100 journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza in the last six months, he said.
This “massacre must stop,” he added, calling on the international community to “increase the pressure” on Israel.
Speaking to journalists in Ankara, Fahrettin Altun, communications director of the Turkish presidential office, said that “Israel deliberately and willfully targeted this massacre.”
Altun reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas discussed the attack in a phone call.
“No matter what happens, we will continue to stand firm against Israel’s barbaric attacks on Gaza and Israel will pay the price for this cruelty,” Altun Erdogan reported.
According to local sources, at least 70 people injured in Israeli attacks on Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip have been taken to the camp’s Al-Awda hospital since Friday morning.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 33,600 people since the war began on October 7th.