“If these words arrive, know that Israel has managed to kill me and silence my voice”: the last message of Anas al Sharif, the jazeera reporter who died with 5 companions in Gaza

- Author, Writing
- Author's title, BBC News World
11 August 2025

“This is my will and my last message.”

The journalist Anas Al Sharif, 28, one of the best -known reporters on the television channel Al Jazeera in Gaza, had the feeling that each of the information he sent from the strip could be the last.

This Sunday night he died with five other journalists in a deliberate attack of the Israeli army against the tent in which they lived and worked at the gates of the Hospital to Shifa in the city of Gaza.

Al Sharif had left a prepared text, a kind of testament to be published in the case of his death, they pointed out their relatives in a message in their X account.

“If these words arrive, know that Israel has managed to kill me and silence my voice. First, that peace is with you and the mercy and the blessings of God,” begins the letter attributed to him, which is dated April 6, 2025.

The strip has become the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. Since the conflict began on October 7, 2023, 186 informants have died in Gaza, according to the figures of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

Minutes before his death, Al Sharif had published his last coverage of the Israeli bombings in Gaza, in which he assured that an intense “fire belt” was hitting the east and south areas of the city of Gaza.

One of those bombs was directed against the store where Anas al Sharif and other fellow journalists and camarophraphs took refuge.

Anas Al Sharif with a helmet and a protective vest in which he says "Press" He makes a camera report for Al Jazeera, with a microphone from the Catarí channel in one hand and a mobile in the other. It is next to some tents and you can see other people passing behind it. — Photo foot, Anas Al Sharif was one of Al Jazeera's most emblematic faces.

An emblematic face

Al Sharif had become one of the most emblematic faces in Gaza for the Catarí chain, a reference in the Arab world.

The reporter had ventured to the north of the strip to inform the Israeli bombings in one of Gaza's most punished areas, and had taken the famine suffered by the Gazati to the screens of millions of spectators.

“I have lived the pain in all its details, I have tried suffering and loss many times, but I never hesitated to transmit the truth as it is, without distortions or falsifications,” says the reporter in the message posted on his social networks.

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With his work, he continues, he was looking for God to witness “those who accepted our murder, of whom they drown us and whose hearts were not moved before the dispersed remains of our children and women, without doing anything to stop the massacre that our people have suffered for more than a year and a half.”

In addition to the Sharif, their companions of Al Jazeera Mohammed Qreiqeh, a reporter like him, the Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, and the team driver, Mohammed Noufal, also perished in the attack. Reuters reported that a sixth freelance journalist, Mohammad al-Khaldi, also died in the bombing.

Israeli attack target

Israel has acknowledged that Sharif was the target of the attack, and accused him of being a Hamas leader who passed through a journalist, despite the long professional history of Al Sahrif. Of the other dead informants in the same bombing he has said nothing.

The BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen, who has been able to see the evidence that the Israeli government has presented, said “are not convincing.”

The suffering of the Palestinian people is also present in the posthumous message of Anas to the Sherif: “I urge not to let the chains silence them, nor that the borders restrict them. They are bridges towards the liberation of the earth and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom comes out of our stolen homeland. I entrust them with the care of my family.”

The Sherif was a father of two, Sham, 4 years old, and a boy, Salah, one.

Born in 1996 at the Yabalia camp, north of the Gaza Strip, and has been one of the most prominent field correspondents of Al Jazeera since the outbreak of the war in October 2023.

In December 2023, he lost his father, Jamal al Sharif, in an attack that aimed at the family home, after which he continued his journalistic work.

The reporter covered the attacks against his colleagues, including Ismail to Ghoul and Rami to Rifi, who died in a chocolate in the Shati refugee camp in 2024.

Anas al-Sharif (right) and Mohammed Qreiqeh (left), both dresses with bulletproof vests in which he says "Press"during the informative coverage of the Gaza War. — Photo foot, Al Jazeera Mohammed Qreiqeh (left) and Anas Al Sharif (right).

The editorial director of Al Jazeera, Mohamed Moawad, rejected the Israeli accusation and declared to the BBC that Sharif “was only doing one thing: informing and giving voice to those who do not have it within the city of Gaza.”

The Israeli army does not allow the entry of foreign media to the Gaza Strip, so the only information that comes from there comes from local reporters and the testimonies of Gazati citizens.

The United Nations Human Rights Office has condemned the murder of the six journalists in Gaza, qualifying it as “serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

In an X publication, he said that “Israel must respect and protect all civilians, including journalists.”

“We ask for immediate, safe and obstacle access to Gaza for all journalists,” continues the statement.

Informative block

He has also denounced the attack attacks without borders (RSF), which in a statement affirms that “energetic and angrily condemns the murder recognized by the Israeli army” of Anas Al-Sharif and the other journalists.

The defender of press freedom states that it was “one of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip (and) the voice of the suffering that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Ask that it is urgently ended to “Israel's informative blocking strategy, aimed at hiding the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the Sitgeard and Hungry Palestinian enclave.”

Martin Roux, who runs the crisis table of the organization, declared this morning to the BBC News Channel channel that is “scary” that Israel has granted “the right to kill journalists when he decides that they are terrorists.”

“I don't know how we can continue working normally,” says Roux.

A crowd surrounds the bodies of the dead reporters in the Israeli attack, which are covered by the Palestinian flag and an antibala vest in which it reads "Press". In the background you can see ruins. — Photo foot, A crowd surrounds the bodies of the dead reporters in the Israeli attack.

The Israeli army states that it has a large number of documents found in Gaza confirming that Anas al Sharif belonged to Hamas and was the leader of a cell.

It ensures that these include “personnel lists, lists of terrorist training courses, telephone directories and salary documents.”

However, the only thing that has been published are some captures of spreadsheet sheets that apparently list the Hamas operations of the North of the Gaza Strip, with indications of the injuries suffered by Hamas operations and a section of what is said to be a telephone directory of the Yabalia East Battalion of the armed group, according to the BBC correspondent in Jerusalem, Yolande Knell.

BBC has not been able to independently verify these documents.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had previously reported that Al-Jazeera's correspondent, Anas Al-Sharif, had “connections with Hamas and covered armed activities.”

In August 2024, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee accused Al Sharif of covering up “Hamas and Islamic jihad” activities in a bombed school.

In a publication on platform X said that “they are hiding the crimes of Hamas and Islamic jihad hiding within the schools. I am convinced that they know the names of a large number of Hamas terrorists among those killed in school, but they are riding a false media show that does not have any connection with the residents of Gaza.”

In July 2025, Adraee said that Al Sharif was “one of the six jazeera journalists affiliated with Hamas or Islamic jihad”, an affirmation that Al Jazeera flatly denied.

At that time, the Sharif qualified the accusations of “terrorism” of Israel against him as “provocative” and “an attempt to silence me, in an effort to stop my coverage in Al Jazeera and social networks.”

“My message is clear: I will not shut up. I will not stop. My voice will continue to witness each crime, until this war ceases as soon as possible,” he wrote then.