Sami Barhoom's account on Israel's deliberate attack on TRT crew in Gaza

On the afternoon of August 18, Sami Barhoom finished covering a news story at a Turkish cemetery near an Austrian housing project in the northern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Soon after completing his assignment, the 33-year-old Palestinian journalist, who works for TRT Arabi, was driving with his colleague Hazem el-Baz, when the duo suddenly found themselves caught in a hail of bullets striking their car. Israeli snipers, positioned in residential buildings in the Hamad area in northwestern Khan Younis, were trying to pick them off.

“We were on a press mission to prepare a report about the overcrowding of graves with bodies and the absence of possible spaces to accommodate new Palestinian deaths,” says Barhoom while talking to TRT World over the phone.

“They attacked us with direct and deliberate live bullets,” Barhoom says. “It is clear that they are deliberately targeting us because they know that we represent the official Turkish media. They know that the official, governmental, and popular Turkish positions reject the ongoing war on Gaza”.

The bullets penetrated their car’s windshield and ripped through the car’s bonnet, malfunctioning the engine.

“I had no choice but to leave the car and crawl a few meters away. As I was laying on the sand, the firing continued for about 15 minutes,” Barhoom says.

Barhoom and his photographer took shelter in a sandy area for 30 minutes under an intense sniper attack as bullets ricocheted off the sand.

One bullet brushed Barhoom’s right knuckle, injuring him mildly.

This is not the first attack Barhoom’s team has faced. His crew has been subject to four “direct” attacks including the most recent one when they have covered different stories across Gaza since October 7.

Attack after attack

The first attack occurred in the Jabalia camp, the biggest refugee-populated area in Gaza, in late October, when the Israeli army targeted a residential square, killing dozens of people in a notorious massacre. “We miraculously survived there,” Barhoom says.

The second attack was in mid-November at the Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s biggest medical complex, which has been targeted by Israeli attacks repeatedly leaving the medical centre in ruins. During the November attack, dozens were killed, says Barhoom, whose crew survived the massacre.

In April, in the Nuseirat camp, the third direct attack came on Barhoom’s team, injuring both him and one of his colleagues, Sami Shehadeh, a cameraman, whose foot was amputated.

“My message to the international community who are seeing us first-hand. Are we journalists wearing armour? Why do you see us wearing helmets? Why?” asked Shehadeh in a mid-April interview after the attack on him.

He drew attention to the grave fact that the Israeli army has attacked journalists with impunity as the global community limited its responses to Tel Aviv’s horrible crimes with mere condemnations since the beginning of the conflict following Hamas’s October 7 operation.

“This is a combat zone and the Israeli army deals with us, journalists, just as it deals with residents, killing us and targeting us directly,” says Barhoom.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 108 Palestinian journalists and media workers were killed by Israeli attacks, which also wounded scores of reporters as 52 journalists were arrested by Tel Aviv. This grave fact marks “the deadliest period for journalists” since the CPJ began gathering its data on journalist deaths in 1992.

“With more than 12 percent of Gazan journalists dead, it's a mortality rate that would be unusually high for infantry soldiers," Tim Dawson, deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told Türkiye’s Anadolu Agency. More than 40,000 Palestinians, most of whom are children and women, have been killed by the Israeli army since October.

Because Israelis are still able to target journalists thanks to the international community’s ignorance and impassiveness, “it will only make them more determined” to kill, injure and arrest journalists, who are trying to do their job in Gaza, according to Shehadeh.

“I will complete my job. Will you complete yours or will you betray us,” asked the amputated Palestinian journalist, referring to the international community.

Today, Barhoom, like Shehadeh, was on duty “to complete” his job. “The coverage will not stop. I am talking to you from the field, and every time we are exposed to an Israeli attack, we return to the field immediately because we are faced with professional and humanitarian responsibility,” says Barhoom, urging us to be quick on the interview because he is “very busy.”

“Our press coverage via the TRT network will not stop,” he concludes.