Hundreds of people, including many journalists, have gathered to mourn two Al Jazeera correspondents and other journalists killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike.

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.

It was the first time during the 22-month war that Israel’s military swiftly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.

“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.

On Monday, the bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at the Shifa Hospital complex as mourners gathered.

Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.

Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population.

In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.

“I am talking about slow death of those people,” he said at the time.

‘Smear campaign’ after viral broadcast

Press advocates said an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up after footage of the broadcast went viral.

Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.

The strike also killed four other journalists and two other people, Shifa Hospital administrative director Rami Mohanna told The Associated Press. The strike damaged the entrance to the hospital complex’s emergency building.

The airstrike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing.

Qreiqeh, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.

Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognise them, according to video footage they posted at the time.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday it was appalled by the airstrike.

“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director, said in a statement.

International media blocked from Gaza

Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.

Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year, ordering them closed.

The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.

Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.

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”.