Busra Nur Cakmak
13 May 2021•Update: 13 May 2021
ANKARA
Turkey’s communications director on Thursday condemned Israeli attacks on Anadolu Agency and TRT Arabi journalists.
“Israel continues to commit crimes against humanity in Palestine. It targets the media for telling the world about Israel’s policy of occupation and terror attacks,” Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.
“Having targeted Anadolu Agency in recent days, conducted an airstrike against the TRT Arabi office in Gaza to show that it has no respect for any value,” he added.
Altun condemned Israel’s “state terrorism,” and vowed to “do everything in our power to hold it accountable for all those crimes.”
TRT Arabi’s Gaza office was targeted by Israeli airstrikes when the reporter was on air early Thursday, injuring several people.
Meanwhile, Turgut Alp Boyraz, Anadolu Agency's Middle East news editor, was shot twice by Israeli police in two separate incidents while covering recent events in Palestine.
Boyraz, a veteran journalist with eight years of experience with the agency, was shot in the foot with a plastic bullet on May 7 while covering a raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque's Haram al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem. This Monday he was shot in the leg with two rubber bullets in another Israeli police raid on the flashpoint mosque.
He was one of four Anadolu Agency journalists attacked by Israeli police.
Correspondent Esat Firat, who has worked for the agency since 2016, and two photographers were targeted on Monday while covering Israeli security forces' attacks on worshipers at Al-Aqsa.
Fayez Abu Rumaila, an Anadolu Agency photojournalist in occupied East Jerusalem since 2018, was attacked by Israeli occupation forces while covering clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.
Mustafa AlKharouf, another Anadolu Agency photojournalist who has covered Jerusalem since 2017, said he was hit by a rubber bullet in the chest while providing aid to an injured medic.
AlKharouf said Israeli forces pushed them outside Al-Aqsa Mosque, adding that when he left Jerusalem's Old City and headed toward his vehicle near the wall of Al-Rahma Cemetery, he found a medic injured by shrapnel from a stun grenade.
Ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 11 more Palestinians, taking the death toll to 83, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Fatalities include 17 children and seven women, while a total of 487 people have been injured to date, it said in a statement.
Tensions have been running high in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem since last week when an Israeli court ordered the eviction of Palestinian families. The decision was later postponed.
Palestinians protesting in solidarity with residents of the neighborhood have been targeted by Israeli forces.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed the entire city in 1980, in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
