Gaza Journalist Hassan Hamad Killed in Drone Strike

Hassan Hamad, the 19-year-old freelance journalist who often reported from his home in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, was killed in a drone strike early Sunday morning, according a statement posted to Hamad’s account on X by a colleague.

Hamad often reported for Al-Jazeera over the last year. Maha Hussaini, a Palestinian journalist, told the news broadcaster that Hamad had received threats in the days that led to his death.

Hussaini posted on X in the hours after Hamad died that the journalist had received a message via WhatsApp that read, “Listen, If you continue spreading lies about Israel, we’ll come for you next and turn your family into […] This is your last warning.” He also received multiple calls which were said to be “an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming in Gaza. He didn’t comply.”

The statement shared on Hamad’s account following his death by a colleague read, “With deep sorrow and pain, I mourn the journalist Hassan Hamad. I testify before God that you fulfilled your duty. Hassan Hamad, the journalist who did not live past the age of 20, resisted for a full year in his own way. He resisted by staying away from his family so they wouldn’t be targeted.”

“He resisted when he struggled to find an internet signal, sitting for an hour or two on the rooftop just to send the videos that reach you in seconds,” the statement continued. “Yesterday, from 10 p.m., he moved between the bombed locations and then returned to search for an internet signal, only to go back and cover the scenes of the scattered remains.”

“He endured the pain of an injury to his leg, yet continued filming. At 6 a.m., he called me to send his last video. After a call that didn’t last more than a few seconds, he said, ‘There they are, there they are, it’s done,’ and hung up. It’s a feeling no human can bear. Hassan also resisted the occupation, leaving behind a mark and a message that we will carry on after him. We belong to God, and to Him we shall return,” the statement concluded.

A video shared online by journalist Mohamed Mohana reportedly shows Hamad’s remains being carried in a small blue plastic bag.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported Friday that to date, at least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. CPJ also reported that at least 42,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict and cited numbers by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” CPJ program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement. “Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”

As civilians, journalists are protected by international law and are not supposed to be military targets, and to deliberately target a journalist is a war crime.

Foreign journalists are prohibited from entering Gaza without explicit permission from Israel, which has included being accompanied by Israeli forces. The result is that many Palestinian journalists have turned to the few options they have: a news station such as Al-Jazeera and social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X.

The ban on allowing foreign journalists into Gaza limits the amount of information that can flow into or out of the territory and has also limited the ability of independent news to be reported. Journalists in Palestine are coping with two realities: their obligation to report in real-time what is happening on the ground as well as ensuring their own safety and protection from the ongoing war.

In May, cable news upstart NewsNation sent a letter to Israel’s embassy in Washington, D.C. and requested journalistic access to Gaza. The letter was signed by NewsNation programming and specials president Michael Corn and president and managing editor of news and politics Cherie Grzech.

“Since the subsequent military operations by Israeli forces began, the worldwide public has had to rely on Palestinian accounts of the war, the humanitarian situation there, and the number of civilian casualties,” the letter reads. “The resulting information vacuum has led to reliance on reports that have often turned out to be exaggerated, inflated, or flat out false.”

Allowing independent journalists into Gaza would “allow the public to see for themselves what is happening with food aid intended for civilians, as well as whether Hamas tactics include operating in civilian enclaves, public infrastructure, and in and around hospital facilities.”

“We, as journalists, believe we have an essential role to play in the public’s right to know the details of a life-and-death struggle that will have international repercussions for years to come,” the letter continued. “We are asking your permission to allow us to fulfill that vital role.”

The CPJ reported that five journalists — Issam Abdallah, Hamza Al Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya, Ismail Al Ghoul and Rami Al Refee — are believed to have been deliberately targeted as part of the war in Israel.

Abdallah — who often reported on business, human rights, and culture for Reuters — died Oct. 13, 2023 after two shells fired by Israeli soldiers hit him and injured six other journalists who were covering cross-border fire exchanged between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah at the border with Lebanon. Reuters conducted its own investigation into Abdallah’s death and determined “the shells were fired from Israel, that the journalists were wearing helmets and flak jackets marked ‘press’ and were close to a car with ‘TV’ written across its hood, and that they were not near any active fighting or military targets at the time of the attack.”

Al Dahdouh, a journalist and cameraman for Al-Jazeera, and Thuraya, a freelance video journalist for Agence France-Presse, both died Jan. 7, 2024 following a drone strike that appeared to target their car. The Times of Israel reported the next day that Dahdouh and Thuraya were traveling with a “drone-operating terror operative.” The IDF did not reply to CPJ requests to release the identity of the third passenger who was an alleged terrorist.

Al Ghoul and Refee, who both worked for Al-Jazeera, were killed July 31, 2024. The pair were filming outside the home of assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza just before the car they left in was hit by a drone strike. The IDF later confirmed they had targeted Al Ghoul, who they stated was a member of Hamas.

In February, members of a U.N. Human Rights Council-appointed panel of U.N. experts condemned the deaths of journalists in Gaza. “We are alarmed at the extraordinarily high numbers of journalists and media workers who have been killed, attacked, injured and detained in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Gaza, in recent months blatantly disregarding international law,” the experts said in a statement.

“We condemn all killings, threats and attacks on journalists and call on all parties to the conflict to protect them.”