Moamen Abu AlOuf, a 19-year-old Palestinian freelance photographer, was killed on the evening of June 9, 2025, while documenting the rescue efforts of medical teams retrieving casualties following an Israeli shelling of a Palestinian home in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, according to his brother, Majd, and his colleague and friend, Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, who spoke to CPJ.
Abu AlOuf had more than 78,000 followers on his Instagram account, where he posted news updates, photos, and videos from northern Gaza.
“Throughout the war, he covered events in Gaza City and the northern regions of the Strip. He had documented many Israeli massacres and the siege of hospitals in northern Gaza,” Al-Sharif told CPJ, adding that Abu AlOuf had been living in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Abu AlOuf was killed by Israeli artillery fire from a tank, which also resulted in the deaths of three paramedics and several of the injured from the earlier shelling.
Al-Sharif said that Abu AlOuf had accompanied paramedic teams to cover the aftermath of an Israeli attack targeting several civilians in Al-Tuffah. “As soon as the medical crews began retrieving the bodies and rescuing the wounded, and as Moamen documented their work, Israeli artillery targeted them directly,” he told CPJ. “He was killed instantly.”
Abu AlOuf’s brother told CPJ: “Moamen went with the paramedics to document the recovery of the martyrs and wounded, but minutes after their arrival, a tank targeted the apartment."
“Medical teams were initially unable to retrieve the bodies of Abu AlOuf and the others due to the Israeli army’s refusal to grant access. The following morning, civil defense and rescue crews recovered their remains, which were found in fragments,” said Majd Abu AlOuf. “Moamen was torn to pieces as a result of the shell hitting him directly,"
Following his death, Abu AlOuf’s friends posted on his Instagram account a screenshot of one of the threatening text messages the journalist had received from Israeli phone numbers. Videos of his mother at his funeral, along with screenshots of WhatsApp and video messages Abu AlOuf had recently made in discussing his possible death with his friends, went viral on social media.
Responding to CPJ’s request for comment, the Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk said they were not aware of the incident involving Abu AlOuf’s death but would continue to review the “claims.”