ANKARA

One more Palestinian journalist was killed in an Israeli attack in the southern Gaza Strip, the Gaza government media office said on Saturday.

In a statement, the media office said Palestinian journalist Muhammad Manhal Abu Armana was killed in an Israeli bombing of displaced people’s tents in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The new fatality brings the total number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip to 159 since Oct. 7, 2023, it added.

According to data and statistics from the International Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based NGO, the Israeli war on Gaza has become "the bloodiest for journalists" since the committee began documenting journalist killings worldwide in 1992.

Last February, the International Center for Journalists, a Washington-based NGO, announced that the war on Gaza had seen the highest levels of violence against journalists in 30 years. The organization called on Israel to stop killing journalists and to investigate incidents of their deaths at the hands of its forces.

Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

More than 38,400 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 88,500 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over nine months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi