Committee to Protect Journalists:

Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers on September 10, signal that its deadly pattern of attacking reporters and newsrooms on the grounds that they publish “terrorist” propaganda has spread firmly across the Middle East.

Yemen’s September 26 newspaper was the first to name the 31 killed by multiple strikes on its office and that of the Yemen newspaper, both in the government’s Moral Guidance Directorate’s headquarters. All but one of the dead worked for the two outlets.

Nasser Al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of 26 September, described the killings as an “unprecedented massacre of journalists,” with multiple strikes hitting its newsroom at around 4:45 p.m. as staff were finalizing publication of the weekly paper, which is the Yemeni army’s official outlet.

“It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words,” he told CPJ, adding that many colleagues were reduced to body parts.

A child, who had accompanied a journalist to work, was among the dead, Al-Khadri said, while 22 journalists were injured.

The incident is the second deadliest single attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ, following the 2009 Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines, in which 32 journalists were among those killed when a convoy was ambushed.

Al-Khadri called on the international community to take a firm stance.

“The Israeli military destroyed the newspapers’ facilities, printing presses, and archives. The archive of 26 September is one of Yemen’s most important historical records, documenting the country’s history since the last century, and its loss is deeply painful,” he told CPJ. [Continue reading…]