GAZA MEDIA OFFICIAL SAYS ISRAEL KILLED 263 JOURNALISTS IN THREE YEARS

Israel has killed 263 journalists and media workers in Gaza since the war began three years ago, according to Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza Government Media Office, in comments to Anadolu Agency. He said Israeli authorities had detained 50 journalists, with 23 still held. Three more are missing, he said, naming them as Nidal Suheil al-Wahidi, Haitham Jamal Abdul Wahid and Ahmad Issam al-Agha. The figures cover the three years since the war in Gaza began.

Al-Thawabta said Israeli attacks had also damaged or destroyed dozens of media offices in Gaza, including television, radio, newspaper, digital and printing premises. He put total losses to Gaza's media sector at about $1 billion, covering premises, equipment and broadcast vehicles. Separate reporting showed settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank has also continued. Israeli ministers gathered on a West Bank hilltop on 23 September, weeks before Israel's parliamentary elections, to inaugurate a new settlement, Metzoke Eretz, deemed illegal under international law. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich addressed the ceremony, praising settlers who had built an outpost that was later turned into the settlement.

Smotrich described a "method" of establishing a farm, seizing land and turning it into a community, saying those involved "are doing Zionism." The settlement stands on the site of an outpost, Netzah Harel, established in 2023 at al-Muarrajat, a Bedouin community east of Ramallah. Alia Mleihat, from the community, said outpost settlers attacked local families and confiscated sheep, and that she was displaced from the area in July 2025. Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli organisation Kerem Navot, said Smotrich's account of the method was accurate but left out the displacement of Palestinians that resulted.