The government office said in a statement on Thursday that "the number of martyred journalists has risen to 225 since the beginning of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, following the announcement of the martyrdom of four fellow journalists."
He explained that "the four new martyrs are: reporter and editor Suleiman Hajjaj, and cameraman Ismail Badah, who both work for the Palestine Today satellite channel," in addition to Samir Al-Rifai, editor at Shams News Agency, and Youssef Al-Nakhala, a journalist at the National News Agency, who died today from injuries he sustained on May 31, according to the statement.
The statement condemned "in the strongest terms the systematic targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation," and called on "the International Federation of Journalists, the Federation of Arab Journalists, and all journalistic bodies in all countries of the world to condemn these systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists and media professionals in the Gaza Strip."
The media office held "the Israeli occupation, the US administration, and countries complicit in the crime of genocide, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, fully responsible for committing these heinous, brutal crimes."
He called on "the international community, international organizations, and organizations involved in journalism and media work in all countries of the world to condemn the crimes of the occupation, deter it, and prosecute it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and to bring the occupation's criminals to justice." He also called on them to "exert serious and effective pressure to stop the crime of genocide, to protect journalists and media professionals in the Gaza Strip, and to stop the crime of killing and assassinating them."
Earlier on Thursday, three journalists were killed and others injured in an Israeli drone strike on the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, according to a medical source who preferred to remain anonymous. Another medical source said the death toll among journalists on Thursday had risen to four, following the death of a journalist who had succumbed to injuries sustained in a previous attack.
With full American support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 180,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands displaced.
