Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif was murdered in a targeted Israeli strike on a tent housing journalists outside the main gate of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The attack killed Al Jazeera’s entire team of four staff journalists in the city, as well as two freelancers, one of whom was working for Al Jazeera.
"At 11:22 p.m. on Sunday, an Israeli drone bombed the Al Jazeera tent inside the Al-Shifa medical complex in western Gaza with a single missile. I was about 40 meters away from them, and shrapnel even reached me,” eyewitness and journalist Wadeaa Abu Al-Saud told CPJ.
He said al-Sharif had been inside the hospital’s reception area, covering a missile strike 10 minutes before his death.
On X, Israel’s military accused al-Sharif of being the “head of a Hamas terrorist cell” who “advanced rocket attacks” on Israelis. It did not mention the other journalist casualties.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Avichay Adraee made similar comments on X, adding that “intelligence information and documents obtained from Gaza, including lists of names, terrorist training records, and payrolls, confirm that he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera."
CPJ does not regard as credible the social media images, which include a “Phone directory” of a Hamas battalion and a Hamas “Injury Tracking Document from 2023,” which are clearly not original documents.
The IDF has a longstanding pattern of making unsubstantiated claims that many of the journalists they have deliberately killed in Gaza were terrorists.
The August 10 attack raises the numbers of Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza during the war to 10, in addition to nine journalists who freelanced with the broadcaster, according to CPJ data.
The threats against al-Sharif, a 29-year-old father of two, dated back to November 2023. He received multiple calls from Israeli army officers instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza, as well as voice notes disclosing his location. On December 11, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home, killing al-Sharif’s 90-year-old father.
In July 2025, the IDF’s Adraee stepped up his smear campaign, falsely alleging that al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, after the journalist cried on air while reporting on starvation in Gaza.
Al-Sharif told CPJ, “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world. They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
Al-Sharif was one of six Al Jazeera journalists that the IDF accused in October 2024 of involvement with militant groups, a claim that the Qatari-based channel rejected as “baseless.” As of August, 11, 2025, two were dead and a third was injured.
In his “final message,” published on his social media accounts after his killing, al-Sharif said, “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”
Al Jazeera condemned the “targeted assassination” of its journalists as “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.”
“The order to assassinate Anas al-Sharif, one of Gaza's bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza,” it said, calling for “decisive measures to halt this ongoing genocide and end the deliberate targeting of journalists.”
As of August 2025, CPJ’s email to the IDF’s North America Media Desk to request comment on the killings and additional detail on the terrorism allegations did not receive any response.