Ayman Haniyeh, a Palestinian broadcast engineer with Al-Manara TV Production Company, which provides broadcast services to the Iranian Arabic-language channel Al-Alam, was killed on September 2, 2025, in an Israeli drone strike on Gaza City, minutes before he was due to arrive home to celebrate his 26th birthday.
“Ayman finished his last live broadcast at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and left the company at around 8:45 p.m. to head to his family’s house in Tel al-Hawa,” Hamed El Shobaky, head of Al-Manara’s photography department, told CPJ.
His father, Ibrahim Haniyeh, said his son was on his way to the family home when the strike took place.
“His sister and her children were displaced and staying with us after their home was destroyed, he wanted to bring joy to them. He suggested buying some items to celebrate his birthday,” he said, noting Haniyeh had called his mother to say he was on his way.
“After ending the call, an Israeli drone struck him, and he was killed instantly near our home in Tel al-Hawa, western Gaza,” he added.
Just hours earlier, Rasmi Jihad Salem, a camera operator working for the same media company, was killed in a separate Israeli airstrike on Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
Haniyeh had graduated a year before the war with a degree in electrical and communications engineering, and begun working for Al-Manara as a satellite broadcast engineer after the war began, according to his father.
The IDF’s North America Media Desk responded to a CPJ email seeking clarification on the recent killings of Haniyeh and three other journalists — Islam Abed, Rasmi Jihad Salem, and Osama Balousha — with a general statement saying it takes “all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians including journalists” and that it “never deliberately targets journalists as such.”