Journalist killed in Israeli attack in Lebanon, her colleague recovers from injuries

Friends and family carried the coffin of Amal Khalil on Thursday from her home in southern Lebanon to the cemetery. Her press vest and helmet rested on top, next to white flowers.

Khalil and her colleague, Zeinab Faraj, came under Israeli fire on the road the day before, after a car in front of them was hit in a drone strike.

“When the car exploded, Amal and Zeinab tried to take shelter in a nearby house after Zeinab was injured,” said Hadi Hoteit, a journalist in Lebanon. “Israeli aircraft [then] targeted the building [where they were sheltering] and destroyed it.”

Rescuers from the Red Cross tried to reach them and managed to rescue Faraj. But they had to leave before they could retrieve Khalil because it wasn’t safe. She reportedly remained under the rubble for seven hours. When rescuers were eventually able to get to her, she had already died.

This latest attack came as Lebanese and Israeli officials were meeting in Washington for talks last week aimed at putting an end to the fighting between the Israeli military and the Hezbollah militia group.

US President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire the week prior, but the attacks hadn’t completely stopped. Journalists in the region have increasingly come under Israeli attack in recent years, raising concerns about potential violations of international law.

Khalil was a well-known journalist in Lebanon. She worked for an outlet called Al-Akhbar, which is editorially aligned with Hezbollah.

In past interviews, she said she’d received threats from Israel because of her work.

In one such interview with Arabic media, Khalil said the messages came from the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

“They said we will separate your head from your shoulders if you don’t leave southern Lebanon,” she said in the video.

But Khalil said she wanted to stay in the area to tell the stories of what was happening to the people there.

“International law is very clear,” said Sara Qudah, with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “Journalists are civilians regardless of their nationality or the affiliation of their media outlets or any kind of political point of view, as long as they do not participate directly in hostilities.”

Qudah said her organization has confirmed that Khalil received those threats. She added that CPJ hasn’t seen any evidence that Khalil and Faraj were armed or involved in military activities.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has called the killing “a blatant war crime.”

In response to an inquiry by The World, the Israeli Military said that the incident is still under investigation but that it does not deliberately target journalists, and that it takes all operational measures to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals.

But Qudah said that Israel has killed at least 10 journalists in Lebanon since the end of February.

“In so many cases, Israel would come out and confess that they had killed those journalists, claiming that they are terrorists, without providing any credible evidence that those journalists were terrorists,” she said.

This is the deadliest time to be a journalist, she added. Media workers have also been killed in Gaza and Iran.

Journalists act as witnesses, Qudah explained, and these killings have had a chilling impact.

“It affects the collective memory,” she said. “Who is there to witness what happened, to report on what happened and to document what happened for history for the public knowledge?”

Photographer Zeinab Faraj remains at the hospital, recovering from her injuries.

Amal Khalil’s brother spoke to local media about his sister after her death.

“Amal was a household name,” he said. “Her death is a loss for everyone. She resembled the South in all its details — its sweet breeze, its valleys and its mountains.”