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U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on Tuesday that Israel has killed more journalists since Oct. 7, 2023, than both World War I and World War II combined.
According to the U.N. representative, the number of journalists killed during this period exceeds the number of journalists killed in the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars and the Korean and Vietnam wars—including Cambodia and Laos.
This number also surpasses the toll from the wars in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, Albanese said on X.
According to the latest U.N. Human Rights report, at least 247 Palestinian journalists have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023.
Albanese’s remarks were based on a recent report by the Costs of War Project, based at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, titled “News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World.
The report said that 37 journalists were slain in the Gaza Strip during the first month of the 2023 Gaza War, marking the deadliest month on record for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) since 1992.
“The Israeli army has killed more journalists in 10 weeks than any other army or entity has in any single year,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, in December 2023.
“And with every journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and to understand.”
The report also states that as of March 26, 2025, at least 232 journalists and media workers had been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to an Al Jazeera investigation and recent updates from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
This makes the conflict the deadliest for journalists in a single year on record, according to CPJ.
Almost 380 journalists in Gaza have also been wounded as of January 2025, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
As of late June 2024, nine months into the 2023 Gaza war, an analysis from Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and The Intercept found that one in 10 journalists in Gaza had been killed by the Israeli military.
The report revealed that the death toll of Palestinian journalists is roughly equivalent to the killing of 8,500 U.S. newsroom employees.
By comparison, the total number of reporters killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 stands at 19.
Since that war officially began in 2014, CPJ counts 29 journalist deaths in Ukraine due to crossfire, dangerous assignments, murder and other causes.
The report affirmed that there have been at least 35 cases since October 2023 where there is enough information to confirm the journalists killed were directly targeted by Israel because of their work, according to the Middle East desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Journalists continue to face deadly risks, not only in Gaza but also worldwide.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) recorded deaths of 122 journalists and media workers worldwide in 2024, 43% outside Gaza and Lebanon.
The report mentioned acts of violence, including killings, that happened in 2024 to journalists around the world.
In addition to risks linked to armed conflicts and political instability in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, East Asia and Ukraine.
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