Killing Medics and Journalists: What Impunity for Genocide Looks Like

That is precisely when the second Israeli missile hit the same spot, killing the journalists, the medics, and others who may have survived the first strike. “Double-tap” strikes are designed for maximum killing and specifically aimed at wiping out not just those targeted by the first missile, but those that come to the rescue like medics and those who come to document it like journalists. Israel is no longer just carrying out war crimes in Gaza, but layers and layers of war crimes at a time.

The World Health Organization reported that there have been “735 attacks on health care in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to 11 June 2025, that have killed 917 persons and injured 1,411, affected 125 health facilities, and damaged 34 hospitals.” Earlier this month, when an Israeli strike killed Pulitzer-winning Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and five of his colleagues, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that “192 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war on October 7, 2023. At least 184 of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.” With the Israeli military’s murderous double-tap strike on the hospital complex this morning, these numbers would have to be revised upwards again. Several journalists were killed in the strike, which was caught on camera. Journalists Mohamad Salama, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Hussam al-Masri, and Moaz Abu Taha were killed.

This is, of course, not the first time that medics or journalists were killed in Gaza. In so many cases they have been targeted directly, as was the case with al-Sharif recently. In other cases, medics who have rushed to the rescue scene have been gunned down as well, like those dispatched to save the murdered child Hind Rajab only to face a similar fate at the hands of the Israeli military. Or the medics who were gunned down late at night and buried along with their ambulances by the Israeli military earlier this year, who dumped them in a mass grave.