Lebanese journalist killed by Israeli strike was left under rubble for hours with no medical care, say officials
A journalist was killed in an Israeli air strike while seeking shelter and then left under the rubble for hours without medical care, officials have told The Independent.
Amal Khalil, who worked for Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, was killed in the village of Al-Tayri while covering Israel’s bombing of southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
Two strikes are reported to have struck the town in the Bint Jbeil district, killing two people and injuring one.
The Lebanese health ministry told The Independent in an official statement that the Israeli military “pursued Khalil and her colleague, Zeinab Faraj, who had taken refuge from the first raid in a nearby house, targeting the house where they had sought shelter”.
When the Lebanese Red Cross arrived to transport the wounded, they were obstructed by Israel who “fired a stun grenade at the ambulance and targeted it with gunfire”, the ministry said. “They were unable to retrieve Khalil”.
“Amal had gone into to building to shelter, and the military attacked it,” Rida Moussawi, a spokesperson for the Lebanese health ministry told The Independent.
“After that no one was allowed to go back – the teams needed special tools to take her out from under the building. But the [Israeli military] was attacking any vehicle or anything that was going to search for Amal.
“She was stuck wounded under the rubble for more than seven hours before we were able to reach her.”
Moussawi added that medical aid was further delayed by roads being closed due to bombing and the fact that the Israeli military “attacked the ambulances with guns and grenades”.
“How is it permitted that a media person with no weapons is attacked and no one is allowed to help her when she is wounded?” she asked. “And in a ceasefire – what ceasefire is this? This is not the first time that medical convoys have been attacked we have more than 100 casualties from amongst medical staff.”
It added: “This constitutes a blatant double violation: obstructing the rescue efforts of a citizen known for her civic media activism, and targeting an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem.”
Lebanon’s prime minister Nawaf Salam has condemned the attack and accused Israel of repeatedly targeting journalists in what he described as an “established approach”.
“Targeting journalists, obstructing access to them by relief teams, and even targeting their locations again after these teams arrive constitutes described war crimes,” he said.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists has warned that Israel is engaging in the “deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented”. A record 129 journalists were killed in 2025, according to the CPJ. Two thirds of those were killed by Israel.
