Multiple human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued statements today related to the April 22 killing of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil by Israeli forces, concluding that her killing was almost certainly a war crime and should be investigated as such.
Amal Khalil, a journalist for the newspaper Al-Akhbar, and photojournalist Zainab Faraj were targeted in the village of al-Tiri on April 22 when they were attempting to cover an Israeli airstrike earlier in the day. They were attacked by an Israeli drone, wound and chased by that drone into a building, and the drones then preventing ambulances from reaching them. By the time rescuers were able to access the building, Khalil was dead and Faraj was in critical condition.
The two were trapped for hours, with drones dropping stun grenades on Red Cross workers, and opening fire on ambulances that got too close to the building. Human Rights Watch concluded that the evidence was Israel knew full well the two were civilians and attacked them anyways.
Funeral for Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil | STR via Reuters Connect
“The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, but the facts and evidence show that it has repeatedly done so,” a Human Rights Watch researcher noted, while Amnesty added that it was a “direct attack on civilians which should be investigated as a war crime.”
The IDF expressed “regret” over the death of the journalist, but framed it as a “series of events” that ended in the death of two alleged Hezbollah members as well. Their statement didn’t appear to dispute the rights groups’ version of the events, which was a deliberate attack and killing of the journalist who was attempting to cover the slaying of the other people, which happened hours prior.
Khalil was the ninth journalist to have been killed by Israel in their 2026 invasion, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, wounding a substantial number of others in which by all appearances were deliberate attacks.
Lebanese journalist Sahar Mandour noted that the Lebanese government had done nothing to protect the journalists, neither investigating any of the killing themselves nor taking any legal actions over the deliberate killing of Lebanese journalists inside Lebanon.
