Israeli Strike That Killed Journalist Amal Khalil Was a War Crime, Rights Groups Say
Three international rights organizations have concluded that an Israeli airstrike that killed a Lebanese journalist and seriously wounded her colleague in April constituted a war crime, according to investigations released Thursday.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Legal Agenda said their separate inquiries determined that Israel deliberately and directly attacked the two civilians, despite knowing or having reason to know they were journalists and non-combatants. The groups called for the incident to be investigated as a war crime, with Human Rights Watch urging states to halt arms sales to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for what it described as ongoing crimes.
The strike occurred on April 22 in the village of Al-Tiri in southern Lebanon, killing Amal Khalil, a 42-year-old journalist with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar. Her colleague Zeinab Faraj, a 21-year-old freelance photographer and camera operator, was seriously wounded in the attack.
According to the investigations, the Israeli military carried out three strikes on Al-Tiri that day. The first hit a vehicle in front of the car carrying Khalil and Faraj, forcing the journalists to take shelter in a nearby building. About an hour later, a second strike hit that building while the two women were inside, wounding them. A third strike followed another hour later.
The reports describe Israeli surveillance drones hovering overhead throughout the ordeal. Faraj told investigators that the drones came within less than a meter of her through a broken roof, and that she feared it would explode. The drones carried no visible explosives but hovered constantly, provoking fear.
The rights groups also said that Israeli forces delayed Lebanese ambulances from reaching the wounded journalists for hours. At one point, according to the reports, Israeli forces dropped stun grenades on Lebanese Red Cross workers and opened fire on their ambulances.
The delay may have contributed to Khalil’s death, the reports suggest. Hospital records indicate Khalil might still have been alive hours after the strike toppled the building onto her and Faraj, according to the investigations.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of committing a war crime in connection with the incident, a charge Israel has not formally responded to in the reports.
Amnesty International’s Heba Morayef said that after the first strike eliminated the military target, and with drones flying low overhead, the Israeli military knew or should have known that two civilian women were sheltering in the building. Despite this, she said, they proceeded with what there were reasonable grounds to believe amounted to a direct attack on civilians.
Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss said the evidence showed the Israeli military knew or should have known that Faraj and Khalil were civilians, attacked them anyway, and then prevented paramedics from rescuing them for hours.
Israel said it “regrets any harm caused to journalists” and described the deaths as part of a series of events during which two Hezbollah military operatives were killed. The military said the journalists were killed in the course of targeting Hezbollah fighters, and that there was about two hours between the initial strike that killed the two men Israel said were in Hezbollah and a second strike on the building where the journalists were sheltering.
The rights groups’ findings come against a broader backdrop of journalist casualties in the region. According to the UN human rights office, at least 15 journalists have been killed in Lebanon and 210 in Gaza since 2023.
Amal Khalil was a journalist for Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese daily, and Zeinab Faraj was a freelance camerawoman and photojournalist. Both were on assignment at the time of the attack.