GENEVA: A UN expert accused Israel Monday of intentionally targeting journalists in a bid to cover up “genocide,” warning that the war raging there was the deadliest ever for media workers.
“The way in which journalists are being killed, silenced ... is the cover-up of genocide,” Irene Khan, the special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told reporters in Geneva.
She said the latest United Nations figure showed that at least 252 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war was triggered by militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
That makes it “the deadliest conflict ever for journalists,” Khan said, warning that the number “is of course likely to go up, because every week we hear news of more killings.”
Already, “more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both World Wars, Vietnam War, wars in Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan combined,” she said.
