New York, November 26, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for an immediate international investigation into a deadly Israeli strike in Lebanon that legal experts believe could be a war crime as it likely deliberately targeted civilians, killing three members of the media.
“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Israel must be held accountable for its actions and the international community must act to ensure that journalist murders are not allowed to go unpunished.”
On November 25, investigations by Human Rights Watch and Britain’s The Guardian newspaper revealed that Israel’s October 25 airstrike in south Lebanon was carried out using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced bomb guidance kit.
Two journalists and a media worker — Ghassan Najjar, Mohammed Reda, and Wissam Kassem — were killed and three more journalists were injured by the 3 a.m. strike on a compound in the southern town of Hasbaya where more than a dozen journalists had been staying for several weeks.
The investigations, which included site visits, interviews with survivors and legal experts, and analysis of munitions remnants, video, photo, and satellite images, found no evidence of military activity, forces, or infrastructure in the area. Human Rights Watch concluded that the Israeli military “knew or should have known that journalists were staying in the area and in the targeted building.”
The New York-based rights group further said that U.S. officials “may be complicit in war crimes” because of U.S. weapons transfers to Israel whose military has carried out “repeated, unlawful attacks on civilians.”
Last month, a CPJ report called for accountability for Israel’s killing of Lebanese journalist Issam Abdallah and wounding of six other journalists in an October 13, 2023, tank strike on a hillside in south Lebanon.
Prior to the Israel-Gaza war, in May 2023, CPJ’s “Deadly Pattern” report found that Israel had never held its military to account for 20 journalist killings over 22 years.
Immediately after the October 25 strike, Israel’s military said it had struck a “Hezbollah military structure” and that “terrorists were located inside the structure.” A few hours later, the army said the incident was “under review.”
CPJ did not immediately receive a response to its email to the Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk asking whether they’d reviewed the circumstances of the strike, whether they knew there were journalists in the targeted location, and if they were targeted for being journalists.
At a November 25 press briefing, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he was aware of the Human Rights Watch report and department officials “generally do take these reports very seriously,” but said he did not have any “further assessment, either to the type of weapon that was used or to the nature of the strike itself.”