Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old Palestinian correspondent in northern Gaza for the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed on March 24, 2025, in an Israeli strike on his car near the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
"Hossam was interviewing a citizen before heading to the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip for a live broadcast on Al Jazeera Mubasher. An Israeli drone directly targeted him with a single missile, killing him," Palestine Today TV correspondent Ahmed al-Bursh, who filmed the aftermath of the incident, told CPJ.
"I was about 50 meters away from him, and I was supposed to get into his car, which was parked next to him, to go to the hospital, when the bombing happened," he said.
On March 18, Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.
On March 25, Al Jazeera Media Network condemned what it described as the “assassination” of its correspondent who was “brutally killed in an airstrike targeting his car.” It accused Israel of engaging in “systematic killing” of journalists, naming four other Al Jazeera journalists killed during the Gaza war: Samer Abu Daqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.
Shabat was also a contributor to the U.S.-based Drop Site News, which said in a statement that he filed “poetic and painful dispatches” from Gaza and “regularly received death threats by call and text.” The outlet said that it held the Israeli and the U.S. governments responsible for Shabat’s killing.
On March 25, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on the social media platform X that the IDF and Israel’s intelligence agency Shin Bet “eliminated the terrorist” Shabat, accusing him of being a Hamas sniper, in addition to a journalist. Adraee attached a blurry Excel sheet that which it alleged was a list of names, including Shabat’s, in Hamas’ Beit Hanoun battalion in northeast Gaza.
On October 23, 2024, the IDF accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working with Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. CPJ has called on Israel to stop making unsubstantiated terrorism allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of Palestinian journalists.
Shabat told CPJ that he was not a member of Hamas. “We convey the truth on Al Jazeera Mubasher, and we move within the areas classified by Israel as safe,” Shabat said. “We are citizens, and we convey their voices. Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”
On November 19, 2024, Shabbat was injured when an Israeli airstrike hit a house in the Al-Basra neighborhood in southern Gaza. Shortly after the attack, Shabat posted details on social media, saying he was “deliberately targeted by Israeli forces.” Shabat told CPJ he believed the bombing could have been intentional and linked to accusations made by the IDF.
Shabat’s last post on his Facebook and Instagram pages was a photo of journalist Mohammed Mansour, who was killed hours earlier.
In a post on X, Shabat’s friends shared his final words, which he wrote before his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side… For the last time, Hossam Shabat, from northern Gaza.”
CPJ’s emailed IDF’s North America Media Desk to ask whether it knew that civilians and journalists were in the area it attacked, whether Shabat was targeted for his work, and requesting any evidence for its claims of terrorism, but didn’t immediately receive a response.