Tasneem Bkheet, a 29-year-old journalist for the local pro-Hamas Al-Saada magazine, was killed along with several family members on October 25, 2023, when Israeli airstrikes bombed their home in the Yarmouk area west of Gaza City, according to the Beirut-based press freedom organization SKeyes and the journalist’s sister Somaia and colleague Diana Al-Maghribi, both of whom spoke to CPJ.
“On Wednesday afternoon, my sister Tasneem was with my family in their apartment in the Taj 3 Tower in the Yarmouk area west of Gaza City when the Israeli warplanes targeted the entire residential area, destroying all the towers and killing dozens, including my sister Tasneem, my parents, my other two brothers and sisters, and their children,” Somaia Bkheet told CPJ.
"I spoke with them at 1:30 pm to check on them because I knew the difficulty of the situation in Gaza. I was with them from the first day of the war, and four days before the tower was bombed, I was forced to flee to the central Gaza Strip," she said.
None of the bodies have been recovered from the rubble, Somaia Bkheet said, because it is not safe while the conflict continues and there is no equipment to do so.
Al-Maghribi told CPJ that Tasneem first worked at Al-Saada magazine, which published in print and online every month to October 2023, several years ago when she was studying for a bachelor’s degree in public relations and media at a university in Gaza.
"Since graduating in 2018, Tasneem was able to write reports and investigations in Al-Saada magazine, and had proven her skills, and became one of its correspondents,” said Al-Maghribi, adding that Bkheet also wrote for the magazine’s parent company Al Thuraya Café, which produces online campaigns, and pro-Hamas Al-Risalah newspaper.
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 Bkheet was targeted for her work did not immediately receive a response.