The IDF has released documents claiming that Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslaiah, killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a hospital in southern Gaza on May 13, was a member of Hamas’s military wing.

Eslaiah, who was injured in a prior strike on April 7, was accused by the IDF of being part of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade and operating “under the guise of a journalist and owner of a press company.”

IDF international media spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani shared on X that documents recovered from Gaza “reveal a list of operatives” in the 3rd Battalion of Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade. “Among them, Hassan [Eslaiah], listed by name, military number and unit: the so-called ‘Media Platoon,’” Shoshani stated. Eslaiah, a freelancer for The Associated Press, had photographed a burning tank on the Gaza border and Hamas operatives entering Kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7, 2023, attack, where dozens of civilians were massacred.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)