BAYSARIYEH, Lebanon — The coffin of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil floated above the crowd, draped in the red, white and green of the Lebanese flag, with Khalil’s press vest and helmet balanced on top.
Khalil, a veteran 43-year-old journalist for the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, was killed Wednesday in an Israeli strike on the house she was sheltering in while covering the ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Wounded in the same attack was freelance reporter Zeinab Faraj.
In tears as they walked through the village of Baysariyeh, the mourners gathered to remember Khalil, the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. For many here, Khalil’s death reflected a larger pattern — first seen in the Gaza Strip — of Israel hunting down reporters.
“This was an assassination; this wasn’t by mistake. The Israeli military knew who she was, and they killed her,” said Mohamed Zanaty, a freelance journalist and friend of Khalil’s who was covering events nearby when she was struck.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in a statement on X, said that “Israel’s deliberate and consistent targeting of media professionals aims to conceal the truth regarding its aggressive acts against Lebanon.” The Israeli military denies it targets journalists.
On Wednesday afternoon, Khalil was driving through the town of Tayri, some four miles from Lebanon’s border with Israel, when an Israeli missile speared a vehicle driving in front of her and killed its two occupants.
Khalil and Faraj got out of the car and sheltered in a nearby house. She initially told her colleagues she was unhurt, but when she went back outside, another strike hit her car, wounding her in the shoulder.
Khalil’s colleagues began a desperate race to coordinate the entry of Red Cross responders to bring out the victims of the first attack and extract the two journalists, who had sheltered again in the house.
But it was no easy task. Although a ceasefire was in place, movement in the area required coordination through a U.S.-French “mechanism” that would stay the fire of Israeli troops currently occupying a swathe of south Lebanon.
Despite a furious bout of calls to government officials, the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeeping troops, permission for the Red Cross to advance didn’t come.
Then at 4:27 p.m., almost two hours after the initial attack, a missile struck the house, collapsing its roof on the two journalists. Khalil was last heard from about 15 minutes earlier, when she spoke to family members and the Lebanese military on the phone, according to colleagues.
When they received permission, rescuers — who were waiting only a few hundred yards away — scrambled to the site. But they came under Israeli attack, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which said the ambulances were hit with a warning strike and machine gun fire.
They reached the site by the early evening and were able to retrieve the two bodies of those who had been in the car in front of Khalil and rescue Faraj, who suffered a head wound and remains in hospital.
But they had to return with bulldozers, because Khalil was trapped under the rubble. It was close to midnight — roughly seven hours after the attack on the house — when they found her, dead.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had attacked “terrorists” in vehicles who approached Israeli troops “in a manner that posed an immediate threat to their safety.” It also denied preventing rescue teams from reaching the area.
The incident was under review, but previous reviews have almost invariably absolved Israeli troops of blame. After an Israeli attack killed three journalists in Lebanon last month, Israel said one of the journalists targeted was a member of Hezbollah.
But Khalil’s killing elicited widespread opprobrium.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement to the Al Jazeera news channel that Khalil’s killing “must be a wake-up call for the international community to enforce international law, urgently investigate Israel’s 262 killings of journalists across the region [since Oct. 7, 2023], and hold all those responsible to account.”
“The Israeli military’s obstruction of medical crews from rescuing wounded civilians is a brutal and recurring crime we have already witnessed in Gaza and now again in Lebanon,” said Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director.
Khalil, who was born in south Lebanon and made it the focus of her work, worked for a newspaper whose editorial line is supportive of armed resistance against Israel. She has also said in previous interviews that she supported resistance, “whether Islamist or communist.”
During the previous bout of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, Khalil told local media that she had received death threats from an unidentified Israeli phone number, warning her she would be killed if she remained in the area.
But she was undeterred.
“I debunk the enemy’s narrative of targeting only military sites by showing evidence of them bombing homes, farms and killing children,” she said in an interview with the Public Source, a Beirut-based online magazine, this year.
“Through my work, I have tried to be in solidarity with these people — the people of the land.”
Hezbollah launched missiles and drones on Israel on March 2, in what the group said was revenge for Israel’s killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and for some 13,000 Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire. Khalil covered the horrific toll of Israel’s subsequent campaign in Lebanon.
More than 2,000 people have been killed along with more than a million displaced. Dozens of villages and towns in Lebanon’s south remain occupied by Israeli troops.
Despite a ceasefire signed this month between Israel and Lebanon, Israel has continued attacks on what it deems as Hezbollah targets and conducted mass demolitions of villages it occupies.
Khalil’s death comes as the Lebanese government is set to begin peace negotiations with Israel on Thursday.
Many Lebanese, including the majority of Shiites who traditionally support Hezbollah, see any negotiations as nothing less than a betrayal — a notion echoed during Khalil’s funeral on Thursday, with crowds chanting, “No normalization” and “Shame on those sold their honor,” as the funeral procession moved through the streets of Khalil’s hometown.
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