Noor Abu Oweimer, a Palestinian journalist and a freelance podcaster for Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubashar, was killed on October 3, 2024, from injuries she sustained in a July Israeli bombing of her family’s home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to SKeyes and her brother, who spoke to CPJ.
Abu Oweimer, 21, had just started her third year as a faculty member of the Journalism and Media department at the Islamic University in Gaza City when the war began in October 2023, and she immediately started working on podcasts and reporting on her social media pages about what was happening in Gaza.
Abu Oweimer’s brother, Zaid Abu Oweimer, told CPJ that “the Israeli warplanes bombed our family home…which led to the martyrdom of my mother and my younger sister, while Nour suffered severe burns and wounds, and my other brothers, their wives, and their children suffered minor injuries.”
Abu Oweimer was initially treated at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah before she was transferred to two other hospitals.
"Noor suffered from blood poisoning due to severe wounds and burns that did not heal, and she died due to complications at five in the morning on Thursday, October 3, joining my mother and sister,” Zaid Abu Oweimer told CPJ.
The day before she was injured, Abu Oweimer posted a video on her Facebook account in which she reported on those killed and wounded by the Israeli bombing operations. She wrote that there were “Decomposed bodies under the rubble, others in the alleys and streets, and the last one hanging at the entrance to her house."
CPJ’s email to the Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk asking whether the military knew there was a journalist in the area it attacked and whether Abu Oweimer was targeted for her work did not immediately receive a response.