Mohammed Al Kuaifi, a 37-year old Palestinian journalist with Safa News Agency, was killed on September 15, 2025, in an Israeli drone strike while sheltering with relatives and other displaced people on a rooftop in Gaza City’s Al-Nasr neighborhood. He died alongside his brother-in-law and niece.
The attack came more than a year after Al Kuaifi lost his wife and two children, and was himself injured, in an Israeli strike on his apartment in Gaza’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood on July 2, 2024.
Wael Jarwan, a colleague and close friend, told CPJ that Al Kuaifi never recovered from the trauma of losing his family. He recalled that at their last meeting, “Mohammed broke down in grief and told me he wished to be martyred and reunited with his wife and children.”
Despite his losses, Al Kuaifi continued reporting for Safa until his death, and his YouTube channel shows he remained active supervising academic research at the University College of Applied Sciences.
He is survived by his two daughters — Zeina, 4, who was wounded in the earlier strike, and Mais, 13. His mother, Sabah al-Mashharawi, told CPJ that Al Kuaifi had spoken to her by phone just two hours before his death, entrusting his daughters’ care to her.
After last year’s strike on his home, Al Kuaifi recounted to CPJ how the attack came without warning. He had just stepped into another room of his apartment in Gaza’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood to perform evening prayers and rest.
“I went to perform the Maghrib prayer, then lay down waiting for the Isha prayer,” he said, after the initial strike. “But I woke up two days later in Al-Ahli hospital.”
The strike killed his wife, son, and daughter. His third daughter was thrown by the blast into a neighbour’s home and survived, though she required reconstructive surgery. Al Kuaifi himself was badly injured. “I was wounded all over my body, with nerve damage in my foot, holes in my ears, and many pieces of shrapnel. I still need extensive treatment,” he said.
Al Kuaifi’s final Facebook post, on September 4, 2025, reflected his grief: “O you whom I long to meet, good morning my lady. I write to you and no longer know how to make a morning without you… everything reminds me of you, and everything calls out that you will not return. I will keep writing about you and mourning myself.”
CPJ emailed the IDF’s North America Media Desk seeking comment on Al Kuaifi’s killing, but received no reply.