On April 22, 2026, Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, a reporter for the local newspaper Al-Akhbar, was murdered in an Israeli airstrike after being trapped for hours in a building she and another journalist, Zeinab Faraj, were sheltering in.
Khalil and Faraj, a freelance photojournalist, were on assignment, reporting on recent attacks on the southern village of Bint Jbeil, when the pair took cover after a strike on a nearby civilian vehicle on the main road in Al Tayri that killed two people. They were trapped under rubble for around seven hours after a direct strike hit the building they were sheltering in, according to Al-Jadeed TV. The destruction and direct fire at ambulances prevented rescue operations from reaching the site.
CPJ messaged Khalil after the first attack at approximately 14:30 local time but received no response. Her colleague, Lina Balbaki, told CPJ she was in touch with Khalil after she took shelter from the first strike and was stranded without rescue access. She confirmed to CPJ that Khalil was in good health at the time.
Khalil was last heard from at approximately 4:10 p.m., according to news reports and colleagues CPJ spoke to, when she called her family and the Lebanese military.
The journalist was found dead after the Red Cross was granted limited access to the site, which remained under active fire. Teams were able to evacuate Faraj, who reportedly sustained critical head injuries, and two other civilian who were killed, before being forced to withdraw due to continued shelling and the direct firing on rescue crews and vehicles, according to news reports.
In an interview on Al Jadeed TV, the head of the Union of Journalists in Lebanon, Elsy Moufarrej, accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting Khalil, referencing a texted September 2024 death threat against the journalist. Moufarrej called on the Lebanese government and international bodies to take urgent action against what she called “uninvestigated and repeated Israeli war crimes against journalists.”
About a week before Khalil’s killing, on April 15, 2026, the Israeli Defense Force’s Arabic Spokesperson Avichae Adraee, shared a post on X, showing Amal Khalil saving a cat trapped under the rubble of a house in the village of Ansariyeh, southern Lebanon, calling her a “devil who is playing the role of the compassionate heart.”
CPJ emailed the IDF international press office for comment but did not receive an immediate reply.
In a post on X, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Ella said the “injury of two journalists is under investigation,” denying the obstruction of rescue crews from the site. Lebanese official statements contradict this claim.