محمد عبد الفتاح عطاالله

Atallah, a 24-year-old Palestinian editor for the local Al-Resalah news website and a writer for the regional independent website Raseef22, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beach refugee camp in northern Gaza City, along with an unidentified number of family members, according to a tweet by Raseef22 that included his last voice message, the local news agency Safa, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the International Federation of Journalists. Ayman Sharrouf, Raseef22’s political editor, told CPJ that Atallah “wrote for Raseef22 under his name and another pseudonym. He was particularly interested in the daily life stories of the Gazans, despite the siege on Gaza, the corruption, and the narrow political interests in the strip. When the war started, we started collaborating, and he wrote 3 pieces, but he lived in the north where there was intense bombing, and one of the Israeli airstrikes hit his parents’ house, which killed one of his brothers and all of his family members. Sharrouf told CPJ that “Atallah evacuated after surviving a lot of near-death situations. In his last correspondence with us, he told me that he’s safe and he wants to resume working soon, but I later learned about his death from the news.” Sharrouf added, “Mohammed was a very professional journalist. He wanted to relay the voices of the people. He worked hard on his pieces and was very keen on factual reporting of the daily life of Gaza’s people, despite all the challenges that a journalist like him faces. Unfortunately, he was killed before he got to do what he wanted in journalism; and the most horrific heartbreaking part was that he thought he would survive.”