Israeli Airstrike Kills Three Journalists in Southern Lebanon, Officials Say

Earlier this month, Fatima Ftouni reported live on Lebanese television about the killing of her uncle and his entire family in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon. On Saturday, she became the story herself.

Ftouni, a reporter for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al Mayadeen, was killed when an Israeli airstrike struck her clearly marked press vehicle in Jezzine. Dying alongside her were her brother Mohammed, a cameraman, and Ali Shaib, a correspondent for Hezbollah's Al Manar network described as one of the outlet's most prominent war journalists, having covered Israeli attacks on Lebanon for decades.

Israel's military issued a statement saying it had specifically targeted Shaib, calling him a "terrorist" and accusing him of being part of a Hezbollah intelligence unit that reported on the locations of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. No independent evidence for those claims has been released publicly. Lebanon's president condemned the killings as a "blatant crime," and Information Minister Paul Morcis confirmed the deaths, identifying Mohammed as Fatima's brother. Both Al Mayadeen and Al Manar confirmed the deaths of their journalists. Other journalists traveling in the area were wounded, and one paramedic was killed.

The strike poses direct questions about press protections in a war zone where those protections are already under severe strain. The vehicle was clearly marked as a press car, a detail documented in photographs showing police surveying the wreckage in Jezzine. Under international humanitarian law, journalists in conflict zones hold protected civilian status. Israel's claim that Shaib was an intelligence operative is the operative legal question; what evidence supports it has not been disclosed, and how that claim justifies the deaths of two other journalists in the same vehicle is something no publicly announced investigation has yet addressed.

For Americans seeking to understand a conflict in which U.S. forces have conducted joint airstrikes, the deaths narrow an already constrained field of independent reporting. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least three other reporters in Lebanon, Iran and Gaza have been killed in Israeli or joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes since the Iran war began on February 28. The U.S. military did not respond to a request for comment.

The losses deepen a staggering toll on Al Mayadeen in particular. The network has now lost six journalists since hostilities began; Farah Omar, Rabih Me'mari, Ghassan Najjar and Mohammad Reda were killed in earlier attacks. That pattern echoes an October 2024 strike on guesthouses in the southern Lebanese town of Hasbaya that housed only reporters, killing two Al Mayadeen journalists and one from Al Manar and drawing global condemnation at the time.

Al Jazeera's Obaida Hitto, reporting from Tyre as explosions continued in the background, described the entire area south of the Litani River as a "no-go zone" saturated with bombardment. "All the journalists that I'm speaking to here today say that they were just doing their job," Hitto said, "and that the journalists that are still here are going to continue to carry out their work despite the obvious dangers."

The day's violence extended beyond the press vehicle. A separate Israeli air raid in Deir al-Zahrani killed one Lebanese soldier. The Lebanese army announced the deaths of two additional soldiers in Deir Zahrani and Kfar Tibnit, none of whom were on duty at the time. In Henniyeh, a strike killed seven people, including six Syrian nationals.

Lebanon's Ministry of Health said 1,142 people have been killed and more than 3,300 wounded in Israeli attacks since March 2. A separate Lebanese official count put the toll at least 1,189 dead since hostilities broke out. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media that March had become "the second most deadly month for health workers in Lebanon" since the organization began tracking attacks in October 2023, warning that health workers "are protected under international humanitarian law and should never be targeted."

The journalists working south of the Litani on Saturday knew those risks. The question now is whether any party with the authority to investigate will treat the targeting of a clearly marked press vehicle as something that requires a public accounting.