A Palestinian human rights center confirmed on Friday that Israel is deliberately killing journalists in the Gaza Strip in order to intimidate them and prevent them from reporting the truth and the genocide it has been perpetrating to the world since October 7, 2023.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (independent) condemned, in a statement, "the Israeli assassination of a Palestinian journalist, his wife, and his daughter, who were walking near their home in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip."

Earlier on Friday, the Government Media Office in Gaza announced that the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since 2023 had risen to 212, following the death of journalist Saeed Abu Hassanein, who succumbed to his injuries in a bombing that targeted him, his wife, and his daughter on Wednesday.

The center said: "The continued targeting and killing of journalists on an escalating scale demonstrates beyond doubt that the killings are deliberate and intentional, aimed at terrorizing and frightening them, preventing them from conveying the truth to the world, and obscuring the coverage of the genocide against civilians in Gaza."

He stressed that targeting journalists in Gaza is "an integral part of the genocide in the Gaza Strip."

He explained that the number of journalists killed in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide, including 13 female journalists, is "the highest in the world since the beginning of the census of journalist deaths in 1992."