BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed three journalists Saturday, including Al Manar correspondent Ali Shaib, Al Mayadeen reporter Fatima Ftouni and video journalist Mohammed Ftouni, Lebanese broadcasters and officials said. Reuters reported that Israel later said it had singled out Shaib as a Hezbollah operative working under journalistic cover, a claim it did not publicly substantiate and one that immediately intensified scrutiny over the protection of reporters in wartime, March 28, 2026.
In a public military update, the Israel Defense Forces said Shaib belonged to Hezbollah’s Radwan Force intelligence unit and had used his reporting to expose Israeli troop positions in southern Lebanon. The statement did not address the deaths of Fatima and Mohammed Ftouni, and Hezbollah later denied that Shaib had been part of one of its intelligence units.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the strike hit a media car on the Jezzine highway and warned that Lebanon had become an increasingly deadly environment for reporters. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun denounced the killings as a violation of the protections afforded to journalists in war, while CPJ said Israel had provided no evidence to support its allegation that Shaib was a combatant.
The Associated Press reported that the latest deaths raised this year’s toll of journalists and media workers killed in Lebanon to five. AP also said the strike came only days after an Israeli attack in central Beirut killed Mohammed Sherri, Al Manar’s head of political programming, and his wife.
Reuters also said rescue workers sent to the scene were later hit, and a separate Reuters report citing the World Health Organization said nine paramedics were killed and seven others were wounded in five attacks on health care in southern Lebanon the same day. The parallel reports widened attention from the press deaths alone to the risks facing emergency responders as well.
Israeli airstrike in Lebanon kills 3 journalists amid a widening accountability debate
The killings revived memories of the Oct. 25, 2024 airstrike on a journalists’ compound in Hasbaya, where three media workers were killed and cars marked “PRESS” were left under dust and rubble. That case drew wide condemnation because the site had been used as a base by reporters covering the war from southern Lebanon.
They also reopened questions that have lingered since Reuters’ investigation into the Oct. 13, 2023 killing of videographer Issam Abdallah, which concluded Israeli tank fire killed him and wounded six other journalists in southern Lebanon. Those earlier episodes mean Saturday’s strike enters an already charged debate over whether journalists in the border zone are being adequately protected.
For now, the central dispute is narrow but consequential: Israel says one of the three dead was a legitimate military target, while Lebanese officials, press freedom advocates and the victims’ employers say the strike killed civilians doing journalistic work. Reuters described Saturday’s case as the first time Israel had publicly acknowledged killing a journalist in Lebanon, giving the dispute weight far beyond a single battlefield claim.
