Ahmed Abu Mutair, a Palestinian broadcast engineer for Palestine Media Production (PMP), was killed on October 19, 2025, when an Israeli drone fired a missile that struck the company’s headquarters in Al-Zawaida, central Gaza.
The strike destroyed PMP’s rented office, which served as a small production facility providing services to both local and international clients, killing Abu Mutair and Ammar al-Zaaneen, the son of company cameraman Mohammed al-Zaaneen, and injuring cameraman Ismail Jabr.
“Around 4:30 p.m., an Israeli drone suddenly fired a missile at our office. Ahmed Abu Mutair was killed instantly, and cameraman Ismail Jabr was wounded by shrapnel across his body,” Mohammed al-Zaaneen told CPJ. “My son Ammar, who had come to visit me, was also killed.”
He said the strike destroyed a broadcast vehicle, damaged several nearby cars, and caused extensive equipment losses.
“The Israeli military knows this was a media institution, but targeting journalists is nothing new. The attack was deliberate—there could have been many more victims. There were about 25 people there, including reporters, cameramen, and engineers,” he added.
The strike occurred during the ceasefire, which began on October 10. Israel accused Hamas of violating the truce after an anti-tank missile attack in Rafah killed two soldiers, prompting airstrikes across Gaza that it said targeted “dozens of Hamas sites.”
CPJ’s email to the IDF’s North America Media Desk to request comment on the attack did not receive a response.
On October 28, CPJ emailed the IDF again to request further clarifications after German public broadcaster ZDF suspended cooperation with PMP, its Palestinian partner organization, over allegations he was a member of the Islamist group Hamas.
The IDF provided CPJ with files asserting that Abu Mutair was a member of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades. CPJ could not independently verify the claim, and the available evidence remains unclear and inconclusive.
Documents reviewed by CPJ list Abu Mutair’s date of birth as March 19, 1991, though several outlets, including ZDF, reported that he was 37. His brother, Dr. Mahmoud Abu Mutair, an international law specialist, told CPJ that Ahmad did not belong to any political or security organization.
After reviewing the document shared by CPJ, he said that while some data appeared accurate—since Palestinian civil registry information is accessible to Israel and online—he believed the document itself was fabricated. He insisted the signature was not Ahmad’s, and noted his blood type was A+ (not O+), and in 2021 the media worker had two children, not the number stated.
Footage available online from Ahmed’s funeral shows his body covered with a press vest.
On November 6, Paper Trail Media also stated that the document shared by the IDF "raises some questions," citing a DER SPIEGEL investigation by Thore Schroeder, Mohannad Alkhalil Alnajjar, Nikolai Antoniadis, Frederik Obermaier and Maria Retter.