Three Lebanese journalists were killed in a night-time Israeli strike in an area in southern Lebanon that had so far been spared bombardment, local media reported on Friday.
"Our correspondent in Zahle reported the death of three journalists in an Israeli raid on Hasbaya," the Lebanese national news agency (ANI) said, adding that Israeli military aircraft had carried out the bombardments at 03:30 (00:30 GMT) on Friday near the Syrian border.
The pro-Iranian channel Al Mayadeen announced that its cameraman, Ghassan Najjar, and its broadcast engineer, Mohammad Reda, had been killed in the Israeli air raid which, it said, targeted a "journalists’ residence in Hasbaya."
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makari accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists, in contravention of international law.
‘The Israeli enemy waited for the journalists‘ nighttime break to betray them in their sleep, while they slept,' Makari wrote in a post on X.‘This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, as there were 18 journalists there representing seven media institutions."
"This is a war crime," he added.
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, programme director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for an investigation into the raid.
“Deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime under international law," Martinez de la Serna said. "This attack must be independently investigated and the perpetrators must be held to account.”
The CPJ) said in a recent update that, as of Oct. 24, its preliminary investigations showed that at least 128 journalists and media workers had been killed since the start of the war in Gaza, which has since extended to Lebanon.
This makes it the deadliest period for journalists since the CPJ began gathering data in 1992, it said.
