The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate confirmed that the occupation forces' direct targeting of fellow journalists with live bullets in the town of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin, reflects a decision to kill them, and is an expression of the systematic criminal behavior of the occupation army.

According to local sources, Ayman Al-Nubani, a member of the General Secretariat of the Journalists Syndicate, stated to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate that the occupation forces directly targeted seven journalists with live bullets who were riding in three press vehicles and clearly wearing press protection, as they were in an area where there were no field events on their way to the town of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin.

“We narrowly escaped death,” Al-Nubani explained. “If we hadn’t sped up a bit in our car, they would have killed us. It was a direct assassination attempt, when the occupation soldiers started shooting at us directly, which led to our colleague Mohammed Mansour (a photographer for Wafa Agency) being shot with live bullets in his hand, causing him a fracture and a torn bone. Meanwhile, my colleague Raneen Sawafta (Reuters Agency), my colleague Yazan Hamayel (a freelance journalist working for Al-Fajr Al-Jadeed), and I were injured by bullet fragments.”

Al-Nubani added: “Ambulances arrived immediately, and we were transferred to Ibn Sina Governmental Hospital in Jenin, but the occupation forces intercepted us and obstructed the ambulances, and the occupation forces surrounding the hospital subjected us to investigation while we were injured.”

It is noteworthy that the occupation forces have been directly targeting journalists since the beginning of their aggression on the northern West Bank. Yesterday, they directly targeted a group of journalists near the Cinema Roundabout in the center of Jenin, and their vehicles tried to run over a number of them while they were performing their journalistic work.

The occupation forces opened fire on the journalists, wounding journalist Shaza Hanaysheh and the director of the French agency, Ronaldo Schmidt (chief photographer for Agence France-Presse in the occupied Palestinian territories), with shrapnel from live bullets.