Call for probes into shootings of two Palestinian photographers by Israeli troops

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the action of the Israeli troops who shot and wounded Palestinian news photographers Hamid Al Khur and Mohammad Al Zaanoun on 7 and 8 July while they were covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “Khur and Zaanoun were both wearing yellow vests that clearly identified them as journalists, so there was no way they could have been mistaken for combatants,” Reporters Without Borders said, calling on the Israeli authorities to carry out investigations to establish how they came to be shot. Khur, a photographer with the Turkish news agency Ihlas, was shot twice by Israeli soldiers on 7 July while covering clashes between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Khur, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time, was hit first in the chest and then in the right arm. He was initially taken to Kamal Adwan hospital, and from there to a hospital in Jerusalem the next day. Zaanoun, a photographer with the Palestinian online news agency Ma'an, was working in the district of al-Zaitoun, south of Gaza City, when Israeli tanks arrived on the morning of 8 July. He was wounded while photographing the bodies of two Palestinian militants who had been killed in the course of the Israeli incursion. He continued to take photographs until shot in the leg and stomach by an Israeli sniper. He was taken to an Israeli hospital where he was said to be in a critical condition.