The Qatari network called the deaths of Anas al-Sharif, fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh and four other reporters a “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.

“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” it said in a statement.

Al-Sharif’s death comes weeks after a UN expert and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel had targeted him with a smear campaign.

Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability”.

The UN human rights office on Monday condemned Sunday’s airstrike targeting the journalists’ tent “in grave breach of international humanitarian law”.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday that at least 186 journalists had been killed in Gaza, and Brown University’s Watson Institute in April said the war was “quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters”.