Al Jazeera journalist Ismail Al Ghoul, and his cameraman Rami Al Refee, were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli strike targeting a car near the Aidia area, west of Gaza City.

Hamas had condemned the killings as a “heinous crime” which it said was “aimed at terrorising and silencing” Palestinian journalists as they reported “the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for nearly ten months”.

The Israeli military confirmed that it had killed Al Ghoul in the airstrike, alleging that he was a Hamas operative who had taken part in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Al Jazeera dismissed what it said were “baseless allegations” in an attempt to justify the deliberate killing of its journalists.

It said Al Ghoul had worked for the network since November 2023 and journalism was his only profession.

Al Jazeera said he had been arrested and detained at Al-Shifa Hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip when it was taken by Israeli forces in March before being released, which it said “debunks and refutes their false claim of his affiliation with any organisation”.

According to the outlet, Al Ghoul was born in 1997 in the Al-Shati refugee camp, north of Gaza City.

It said that he obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Islamic University of Gaza and began working in print journalism as a correspondent for the local Al Risala and Palestine newspapers.

Al Jazeera said Al Ghoul subsequently pivoted to working in television with several media production companies in Gaza.

It added that with the outbreak of fighting after the Oct 7 attack, he began cooperating with the channel in transmitting news via telephone conversations and then television reports.

“Ismail Al Ghoul filled a great void caused by the practices of the occupation forces in Gaza City which was almost devoid of local and international media.

“Despite the imminent dangers, and while people were searching for ways to escape the occupation’s shells, Al Ghoul was searching for information from the mouth of ‘death’, documenting events using his simple capabilities and sending it to Al Jazeera satellite channel to broadcast it to the world,” the outlet said in its tribute to the deceased journalist.