Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has accused Israel of crimes against humanity for killing journalist Amal Khalil and wounding her colleague Zeinab Faraj in an air strike in the village of al-Tayri in southern Lebanon.

Khalil and Faraj were reporting on an earlier Israeli attack on a vehicle when they were targeted while fleeing towards a building to take shelter. Paramedics rescued Faraj and recovered Khalil’s body from the rubble hours later.

The journalist was last heard from at about 4:10pm local time. She had taken cover inside a house after an earlier Israeli air raid killed two people near her car.

Rescue workers initially tried to reach Khalil but came under Israeli fire and were forced to withdraw, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. A second strike then hit the house where the two journalists had sought refuge.

Khalil, born in 1984 in Baysariyyeh, had covered the region for Al Akhbar since the 2006 war. Her latest reporting focused on Israeli demolitions of homes in villages where Israeli troops are positioned inside Lebanon.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Khalil’s killing “must be a wake-up call for the international community to enforce international law”. CPJ regional director Sara Qudah called the obstruction of medical crews “a brutal and recurring crime”.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of the “deliberate and consistent targeting of journalists” in an effort to “conceal the truth of its aggressive acts against Lebanon”.

The Israeli military denied reports it had prevented rescue teams and said it does not target journalists. However, less than a month ago, three journalists were killed in a similar “double-tap” attack in southern Lebanon.

Source: www.aljazeera.com