Press group accuses Israel of killing 31 journalists in attack on Houthis

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists accuses Israel of murdering 31 journalists who worked for Houthi-run news outlets during a strike on Yemen earlier this month.

CPJ says it marks the second deadliest single attack on the press ever recorded, and although the dead were apparently members of the Houthis’ military wing, it says they should have been protected as civilians under international law.

The strikes came on September 10 after a drone launched by the Iran-backed Houthis breached Israel’s multilayered air defenses and slammed into the Ramon Airport in the south, injuring one person, the latest of dozens of Houthi missile and drone attacks to target the country over the last year.

The Israel Defense Forces said the strikes in Sanaa and in the al-Jawf area north of the capital hit Houthi military camps where operatives were gathered, the headquarters of the terror group’s propaganda division, and a fuel depot. The Houthis reported that a total of 35 people were killed in the strikes.

The propaganda division, officially known as the Moral Guidance Department in the Yemeni Armed Forces, is under complete Houthi control and is headed by Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree.

Yemen’s September 26 newspaper, which describes itself as the official Houthi military outlet, named 31 journalists killed in the strikes, which it said hit its newsroom and another Houthi-controlled outlet, Yemen, both located in the Houthi military’s Moral Guidance Department headquarters in Sanaa.

“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,” September 26 editor Nasser al-Khadri is quoted by CPJ as saying.

CPJ says that it is classifying the killing of the 31 journalists in Yemen as “murders — deliberate targeting of journalists for their work.” Still, CPJ says it can so far only confirm that nine of the 31 are actually journalists, as it continues to investigate.

At the time of the strike, the IDF said the Houthis’ military propaganda division “is responsible for spreading incitement and propaganda messages in the media” and “spearheaded the regime’s propaganda and psychological terror efforts.”

CPJ has accused the IDF of being responsible for the murders of one in six journalists globally since 2016, many of them in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing war. The IDF has insisted that it does not intentionally target journalists, while noting that many on CPJ’s list are members of Palestinian terror groups.