GAZA CITY, Palestine

Five Palestinian journalists have been killed in different locations across the Gaza Strip in the past few hours, the Gaza government media office said on Saturday.

In a statement, the media office said that the new fatalities brought to 158 the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023.

The government media office and human rights organizations have warned multiple times that the Israeli army has been deliberately targeting Palestinian journalists since the start of the war on Gaza to prevent the reporting of its "crimes" in the region.

According to data and statistics from the International Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based NGO, the 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, 2023 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 87,700 others injured, according to local health authorities.

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

Israel stands 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 over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi