The strike that killed a Reuters journalist was an ‘apparently deliberate’ Israeli attack, Group says

An October 13 attack that killed a Reuters videographer and injured six others in southern Lebanon was carried out by the Israeli army and appeared to be a deliberate attack, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

The watchdog group said evidence it examined – including dozens of videos of the incident, photographs and satellite images, and interviews with witnesses and military experts – showed that the journalists were not near areas of fighting and that there were no military personnel were present. target close to their position.

“The attack on the position of the journalists targeted them directly,” said the report, which labeled the attack a war crime.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the report.

Reuters published its own report research Thursday, saying an Israeli tank crew had killed its journalist and injured the others.

“The evidence we now have and published today shows that an Israeli tank crew killed our colleague Issam Abdallah,” Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement. She called on Israel to “explain how this could have happened and hold those responsible accountable.”

On October 13, a week after Hamas attacks on Israel sparked all-out war, the seven journalists from Reuters, Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, stood on a hilltop in southern Lebanon, close to the border. with Israel. They filmed and broadcast cross-border shelling between the Israeli army and Lebanese militants linked to Hamas.

The report said the journalists wore anti-ballistic jackets that said “Press” and had a car that said “TV.” They had been in that position for more than an hour and were visible from an Israeli military site more than a mile away. the report said.

The report states that two rounds of ammunition, fired within 37 seconds of each other, killed Mr. killed Abdallah and injured the six others. An Al Jazeera car was destroyed.

Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that it was an “apparently deliberate attack on civilians and therefore a war crime.”

In a separate reportcontaining some of the same information, human rights group Amnesty International said the journalists were stationary and that their markings “should have provided sufficient information to the Israel Defense Forces that these were journalists and civilians and not a military target.”

It said they would have been visible to Israeli forces on the other side of the border, as well as to an Israeli military helicopter and likely an Israeli drone flying overhead around the time of the attack.

The Amnesty report concluded that Mr Abdallah was killed by a tank round fired from Israel. The second attack came from another Israeli weapon, likely a small guided missile, according to the report.

The incident was “likely a direct attack on civilians that should be investigated as a war crime,” the statement said.

At a news conference in Beirut to announce the findings, Mr Abdallah’s mother, Fatemah Qanso Abdallah, said the report had given her some relief, although she questioned whether it would lead to accountability.

“We will continue to call for justice,” she said, but added: “I fear these murders will be forgotten.”