Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Sunday, alongside four of his colleagues.
Before his death, the 28-year-old had prepared a final message to be released posthumously.
“This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote in a message shared Sunday.
“I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” it continued.
“Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance,” it said. Al-Sharif leaves behind a wife and two young children.
In a statement announcing the killing of al-Sharif, the IDF said he was the “head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops.” It shared images of what it claimed was a Hamas roster list and injury record with his name on both. TIME has not been able to independently verify these claims.
Al Jazeera condemned the killings, calling the attack a “targeted assassination” and a “blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.”
“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.
Al-Sharif had faced threats and allegations of ties to Hamas from the Israeli army for nearly a year before his death, but they intensified following a broadcast in July in which he broke down crying while reporting on Gaza’s hunger crisis. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Avichay Adraee accused him of crying “crocodile tears” and of being part of a “false Hamas campaign on starvation.”
Al Jazeera rejected the claims as “baseless”. The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement describing Adraee’s statements as “unfounded accusations [that] represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill al-Sharif,” and noted that Israel had killed four other Al Jazeera journalists about whom they had made similar statements.
In messages sent to TIME in late July, during reporting for a separate story, al-Sharif said the IDF’s allegations left him in fear for his life.
“I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment,” he wrote in one message. “These threats are clear incitement and an attempt to assassinate my voice, either through bombing or moral distortion,” he added.
Al-Sharif, who had covered the war from the first days of the conflict, told TIME how he had received direct calls from Israeli military officers demanding that he stop his coverage and leave northern Gaza. He also received WhatsApp messages that detailed his precise whereabouts, which he considered a threat to his life. TIME has contacted an IDF spokesperson for comment.
Deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded
The airstrike that killed him struck a tent being used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. It also killed Al Jazeera staff members Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Al Thaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohamed Nofal, as well as freelance journalist Mohammad al-Khaldi. Their deaths brought the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 186—180 of those journalists being Palestinian, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
Hundreds gathered at the Sheikh Radwan cemetery in the Gaza Strip to mourn the five journalists on Monday.
The airstrike came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended a planned military offensive into some of Gaza’s most populated areas, including Gaza City, where the team was based.
CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah accused Israel of “murdering the messengers,” in a statement condemning the strike.
“Israel wiped out an entire news crew. It has made no claims that any of the other journalists were terrorists. That’s murder. Plain and simple,” she said. “It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory,” Qudah added.
The CPJ has previously called the Gaza war the “deadliest conflict for journalists ever documented.”
Reporting on hunger
Al-Sharif was a mainstay of Al Jazeera’s rolling coverage of the Gaza war and one of its best known correspondents. In the video about starvation that drew the condemnation of the IDF, al-Sharif cries as a woman collapses from hunger behind him. “They need only one meal. They need one loaf of bread. They need one sip of water,” he said, his voice breaking.
Nearly 200 people have died from malnutrition in Gaza, including at least 96 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)’s latest update concluded that “mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” and famine thresholds have been met for food consumption across most of Gaza.
In his last video, al-Sharif reported on heavy airstrikes nearby. On the broadcast, he can he heard saying: “Nonstop bombing… For the past two hours, the Israeli aggression on Gaza City has intensified.”
After October 2023, Israel prohibited foreign journalists from entering Gaza. In the absence of international reporters, much of the reporting on the war has fallen to Palestinian journalists on the ground, often risking their own lives and safety in the process. Reporting from the frontlines, they have faced the same losses and destruction as the communities they document, including the destruction of their homes and the deaths of loved ones.
Al-Sharif’s father, Jamal al-Sharif, was killed in a strike in December 2023 while he was praying, according to messages al-Sharif sent TIME in July. Due to the ongoing shelling, he was forced to bury his father in a schoolyard because he could not reach the cemetery safely. While on-air in October 2024, he found out about the deaths of his own relatives while reporting for Al Jazeera.
The Israel-Hamas war was triggered after Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which the group killed over 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages. Over 61,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
In the absence of independent monitoring on the ground, the ministry is the primary source for casualty data relied upon by humanitarian groups, journalists, and international bodies. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified by TIME.
