SANA’A (Dispatches) -- The latest Israeli airstrikes on Yemeni government buildings and newspaper offices have resulted in the deadliest massacre of journalists and media workers in years.
Among the 46 who were killed in the latest attack on the Yemeni capital were at least 25 journalists, according to local reports.
Search and rescue operations remain ongoing. The Yemeni Health Ministry has said that the death toll is expected to rise. At least 165 others were injured in the strikes. Women and children were also among the victims.
The Yemeni Journalists Union said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the heinous war crime committed by the brutal Israeli aggression on Wednesday, through its direct targeting of the offices of 26 September newspaper and Al-Yemen newspaper in the capital.”
The largest massacre of journalists to date was the Ampatuan massacre in the Philippines in 2009. Fifty-eight people were killed, including 32 media professionals. 
Since the genocidal Israeli war in Gaza began, Tel Aviv has escalated its persecution of journalists, killing hundreds since October 7, 2023. 
Over a dozen Palestinians, including five journalists, were killed on August 25 in an Israeli attack on the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis. Ten days earlier, Prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and five others were assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on a media tent at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham reported last month that Israel’s military intelligence created a special unit aimed specifically at justifying attacks in Gaza, including the killing of journalists.
“Intelligence personnel searched for information to provide ‘legitimization’ for the army’s actions in Gaza, failed Hamas launches, use of human shields, and exploitation of the civilian population. A primary mission … was to find Gazan journalists who could be portrayed in the media as Hamas operatives in disguise,” the Israeli journalist said. 
The Israeli army is responsible for nearly 70 percent of all journalists killed in 2024, the deadliest year for journalists globally, according to a report released in February this year by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Two months ago, CPJ warned Israel’s siege on Gaza was “starving journalists into silence.”