TEHRAN – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says recent Israeli attacks on a Yemeni media office were the second-deadliest on journalists in history.

According to the CPJ, the strikes on the offices of the September 26 newspaper and the Yemen newspaper in the capital Sanaa killed at least 31 journalists and media staff from the two publications. 

The organization has classified the Israeli killing of the journalists on September 10 as “intentional, targeted killings based on their work.”

35 people are reported to have been killed in total and more than 100 others were injured in the raids. A child who had accompanied a journalist to the office was also among the dead and 22 journalists were also injured.

Nasser Al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of September 26, described the assault as an “unprecedented massacre of journalists,” explaining that a series of strikes hit the newsroom around 4:45 p.m. while staff were finalizing the weekly edition for print.”

“It was a savage and unjustifiable attack aimed at innocent people whose sole offense was working in the media, equipped only with their pens and words,” he told CPJ, noting that many colleagues were left in pieces. 

The deadliest attack on journalists recorded by CPJ was the 2009 Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines, where 32 journalists were killed in an ambushed convoy.

Al-Khadri called on the international community to respond decisively. “The Israeli military demolished the newspapers’ facilities, printing presses, and archives. The archive of September 26 is among Yemen’s most significant historical collections, chronicling the nation’s history since the last century, and its loss is profoundly heartbreaking,” he told CPJ.

CPJ stated that the Israeli regime’s aggression in Yemen mirrors attacks in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, where it has consistently blurred the line between military targets and journalists, justifying assassinations by labeling reporters as terrorists or propagandists, without presenting credible evidence.

Under international law, journalists, as civilians must be afforded specific protection in military operations. 

On September 10, the Israeli military posted a report on social media that stated it had struck “military targets” in Sanaa and northern al-Jawf Governorate. 

The Israeli military said the strikes were in retaliation for ongoing Yemeni attacks. 

Yemeni forces have been waging missile and drone strikes on sensitive Israeli targets. The Sanaa government has openly declared that these operations are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza facing genocide, a suffocating blockade, and the collapse of an international rules-based order. 

Abdulrahman Mohammed Mutahar, a journalist living just 500 meters from the site, told CPJ the Israeli strikes triggered “massive explosions.” He said around eight missiles reduced the building to rubble, leaving some journalists buried beneath the debris.

“Targeting journalists is an attempt to muzzle the truth,” Nabil Al-Asidi, a board member of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, told CPJ, adding that several of those killed were long-standing and respected members of the union.

Before the Gaza genocide, the CPJ’s 2023 Deadly Pattern report outlined five cases where journalists killed by the IOF between 2004 and 2018 were falsely accused of ties to armed groups, claims that lacked any evidence.

CPJ says it has extensively documented an Israeli pattern of presenting journalists as combatants to justify fatal attacks. Since 7 October, 2023, the occupying regime has killed 247 journalists in Gaza, according to the UN human rights office.

There has been a global outcry against the occupation regime’s systematic killing of journalists in Gaza with impunity.