Israel targets and kills Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif in Gaza as journalist toll grows

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military targeted and killed an Al Jazeera correspondent and others with an airstrike late Sunday in Gaza, after press advocates said an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up when Anas al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.

Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.

The military has previously said it targeted individuals it described as Hamas militants posing as reporters. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.

Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed while sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex also included Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh, plus four other journalists and two other people. Four of the six slain journalists were Al Jazeera staffers. The strike damaged the entrance to the complex’s emergency building.

The airstrike occurred hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended a planned military offensive into some of Gaza’s most populated areas, including Gaza City, and said he directed the military to “bring in more foreign journalists” to Gaza.

The strike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing. Al-Sharif and his employer denied the allegations as baseless.

Condemnation has poured in from the U.N. human rights office, the Foreign Press Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute and Amnesty International, among others.

Al Jazeera called the strike a “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif's death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.

“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.

Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.

Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year. Israel at the time ordered the closure of its local offices, while preventing the broadcast of its reports and blocking its websites.

The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.

Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.

“Only a journalist that is a Hamas fighter or that is, at the time of attack, directly participating in hostilities can be intentionally targeted. Alerting the world to the starvation of civilians, reporting on Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, even disseminating pro-Hamas propaganda, none of this would count as direct participation in hostilities,” said Janina Dill, a professor of global security a the University of Oxford. She added that evidence is mounting that Israel considers anyone who it believes is a Hamas member to be a legitimate target.

"I do not consider this a reasonable interpretation of international humanitarian law,” Dill said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday that at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began. Sunday’s strike brings the total number of Al Jazeera staff journalists killed during the war to 10, not including 8 freelancers, according to CPJ data.

Irene Khan, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”

In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, al-Sharif bemoaned the devastation and destruction that war had wrought and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.

“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.

Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qreiqeh and their colleagues. The bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at the Shifa Hospital complex.

Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.

Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population.

In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.

“I am talking about slow death of those people,” he said at the time.

Qreiqeh, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.

Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognize them, according to video footage they posted at the time.

“Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues have been the eyes and voices of Gaza. Starved and exhausted, they continued to bravely report from the frontlines, despite death threats and immense grief,” Amnesty International said in a statement Monday, adding that there must be an independent, impartial investigation into the killings of Palestinian journalists.

Magdy reported from Cairo. AP writer Molly Quell contributed from Amsterdam.

This story has been corrected to change the name of the second journalist to Qreiqeh. This story has also been corrected to show that four of the six slain journalists were Al Jazeera employees, not five, as the network initially said.

Palestinians pray over the bodies of journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreiqeh, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, during their funeral outside Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

CORRECTS SURNAME TO QREIQEH, INSTEAD OF QUREIQA - Palestinians pray over the bodies of journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreiqeh, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, during their funeral outside Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians carry the body of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who, along with other journalists, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, during his funeral outside Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Colleagues and friends mourn over the body Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qureiqa who was killed with his colleague Anas al-Sharif and other journalists by an Israeli airstrike, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians inspect the destroyed tent where journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qureiqa, were killed by an Israeli airstrike outside the Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinians inspect the destroyed tent where journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qureiqa, were killed by an Israeli airstrike outside the Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Palestinian inspect the destroyed tent where journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qureiqa, were killed by an Israeli airstrike outside the Gaza City's Shifa hospital complex Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Colleagues and friends mourn over the body Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qureiqa who was killed with his colleague Anas al-Sharif and other journalists by an Israeli airstrike, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

MINNA, Nigeria (AP) — A total of 100 of the schoolchildren abducted from a Nigerian Catholic school last month and released over the weekend were hosted at a government-organized ceremony on Monday, many of them looking lost but relieved.

Details surrounding their release were not made public and the government has not said if any ransom — common in such abductions — was paid.

At least 303 schoolchildren were seized in Niger state together with 12 of their teachers when gunmen attacked St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri community on Nov. 21. Fifty escaped in the hours that followed and at least 150 are still held, together with the teachers.

The freed schoolchildren arrived at the Niger Government House in the state capital of Minna in several buses accompanied by military trucks. They were then received by officials who hugged and shook hands with some, before posing with them in front of cameras.

Most of the freed children — between the ages of 10 and 17, according to the school — arrived wearing soccer jerseys, robes and slippers. Officials said they had been in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, since the news of their release broke on Sunday night.

The parents in faraway Papiri say they were not told about the release of the 100 and only learned about it from the media. With anguish and anticipation, many wondered if their children were among those released or still held.

“I’m just worried about his safety but praying he should be among” the freed, Samuel Musa said of his 13-year-old son who was abducted at the school. “His mother has been sick since the abduction.”

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu commended security agencies “for their steadfast work” in ensuring the safe return of the students, but did not provide further details.

“My directive to our security forces remains that all the students and other abducted Nigerians across the country must be rescued and brought back home safely,” Tinubu added.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction, but locals blamed armed gangs that target schools and travelers in kidnappings for ransoms across Nigeria’s conflict-battered north.

The Niger state attack was among a spate of recent mass abductions in Nigeria, and happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighboring Kebbi state’s Maga town. A church in the southern Kwara state was also attacked around the same time — the 38 worshipers abducted in that attack last month have also been freed.

Under pressure at home and from U.S. President Donald Trump — who has alleged that Christians are being targeted in Nigeria’s security crisis — Tinubu has promised he will not relent until all hostages are freed.

Nigerian authorities usually do not say much about rescue efforts and arrests in such cases are rare. Analysts believe that's because ransoms are usually paid. Officials do not admit payment of ransoms.

Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria.

AP’s Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

Government officials poses for photographs with Freed students of the St. Mary's Catholic School in the Papiri community at the government house in Minna, Nigeria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo)

Freed students of the St. Mary's Catholic School in the Papiri community upon arrival at the government house in Minna, Nigeria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo)

Freed students of the St. Mary's Catholic School in the Papiri community upon arrival at the government house in Minna, Nigeria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo)

Freed students of the St. Mary's Catholic School in the Papiri community upon arrival at the government house in Minna, Nigeria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo)

Freed students of the St. Mary's Catholic School in the Papiri community upon arrival at the government house in Minna, Nigeria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo)

Worried parents of abducted school children gather at the St. Mary's Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri community, Nigeria, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. (AP Photo )

A worried parent of abducted school children looks on at St. Mary's Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri community, Nigeria, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. (AP Photo )