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An Israeli tank crew “seemingly” opened machinegun hearth on an identifiable group of journalists close to the border with Lebanon who have been additionally targetted by shelling, a brand new report has discovered.
The report on the October 13 assault, printed on Thursday by the Netherlands Organisation for Utilized Scientific Analysis (TNO) and commissioned by Reuters, discovered {that a} tank 1.34km (0.83 miles) away in Israel fired two 120mm rounds on the reporters with a heavy machinegun in an almost two-minute onslaught.
One Reuters reporter was killed within the assault and 6 journalists have been injured, together with two from Al Jazeera.
Audio picked up by an Al Jazeera video digital camera on the scene confirmed the reporters additionally got here beneath hearth from 0.50 calibre rounds of the kind utilized by the Browning machineguns that may be mounted on Israel’s Merkava tanks – seemingly from the identical level because the tank, TNO revealed.
“It’s thought-about a probable state of affairs {that a} Merkava tank, after firing two tank rounds, additionally used its machinegun towards the situation of the journalists,” TNO’s report stated.
“The latter can’t be concluded with certainty because the course and actual distance of [the machine gun] hearth couldn’t be established.”
The journalists were filming cross-border shelling from a distance in an open space on a hill close to the Lebanese village of Alma ash-Shaab after they got here beneath hearth.
Al Jazeera cameraperson Elie Brakhia and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, and two different Reuters journalists have been among the many group.
The primary shell killed Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, and severely wounded Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Christina Assi.
Requires investigations
Israel’s army stated it was investigating the assault however the outcomes haven’t been made public.
The journalists have been intentionally focused, Reporters With out Borders (RSF) stated in an earlier report, though it didn’t attribute accountability to Israel.
“Two strikes in the identical place in such a brief house of time (simply over 30 seconds), from the identical course, clearly point out exact concentrating on,” RSF stated, citing preliminary outcomes of an investigation based mostly on video footage and ballistic evaluation.
Reacting to TNO’s report, Reuters’s editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni condemned the assault on the journalists in an announcement and referred to as for an Israeli investigation.
“We reiterate our calls on Israel to clarify how this might have occurred and to carry these accountable to account,” she stated.
Ihtisham Hibatullah, Al Jazeera’s supervisor of worldwide communications, additionally urged the Israeli authorities to reveal the findings of its personal investigation, including that the “incident strongly signifies intentional concentrating on, as confirmed by investigations, together with by TNO”.
AFP world information director Phil Chetwynd stated: “If studies of sustained machine gun hearth are confirmed, this may add extra weight to the idea that this was a focused and deliberate assault.”
Mounting assaults on the press
Israel’s battle on Gaza is among the deadliest on file for journalists, with extra reporters killed within the first 10 weeks following October 7 than have ever been killed in a single nation over a whole yr, in line with the Committee to Defend Journalists (CPJ).
The group stated this week it had “discovered a number of sorts of incidents of journalists being focused whereas finishing up their work in Israel and the 2 Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Financial institution”.
Al Jazeera cameraperson Samer Abudaqa was killed by an Israeli strike on December 15 whereas reporting on the Farhana college in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. He was left to bleed to loss of life as emergency employees have been blocked by the Israeli army from reaching the positioning.
Wael Dahdouh, the community’s Gaza bureau chief who earlier misplaced his spouse, son and daughter in a single assault, was additionally injured within the assault.
In January, an Israeli missile hit a car carrying Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Wael Dahdouh within the western a part of Khan Younis, killing him. Dahdouh was touring with fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya who was additionally killed.
As of final month, no less than 99 journalists – most of them Palestinian – have been killed because the begin of the battle on Gaza on October 7, in line with the CPJ.
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