Hamas urges Israeli accountability for assassinating journalists, medics

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has called on the international community to hold Israel responsible for war crimes it has committed against journalists and medics in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Hamas issued a statement on Friday saying that the Israeli regime has murdered members of groups that are protected by law in war time, including journalists and medical and humanitarian personnel, during its ongoing aggression.

“(Israel’s) neo-Nazi leaders should be held accountable for committing heinous war crimes against the Palestinian people,” said the statement.

It came after Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel said one of its cameramen had been assassinated by Israeli forces in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza amid the regime’s expanding ground offensive in the region.

Reports said Samer Abu Daqqa was left to bleed to death for 5 hours after Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching the area where he had been injured in regime attacks late on Friday.

Abu Daqqa’s martyrdom brings the number of journalists assassinated in 71 days of Israeli attacks on Gaza to 90 as the regime continues to indiscriminately target civilians in the enclave.

Hamas offered its “sincere condolences” to the family of Abu Daqqa.

The slain journalist’s son, Yazan, told Al Jazeera that his family plans to bring a case before the International Criminal Court over the martyrdom of their father.

Yazan called on everyone to support the endeavor as he insisted that the family will never give up their rights and will seek to hold Abu Daqqa’s killers accountable.  

“Israeli forces deliberately targeted him while he was doing his job as a journalist,” he said in a post on the X social media platform.

ME