On the night of Thursday, November 2nd 2023, an alleged Israeli airstrike killed at least ten civilians, including Palestine TV correspondent Muhammad Abu Hatab and his family in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, when the strike hit their family home.
Muhammad’s eldest son, Asim, was reported by Israeli news outlet Channel 7 to have kidnapped elderly Israeli civilian Yaffa Adar on October 7th, when Hamas militants killed more than 1,000 people in towns and villages in Israel and took 250 hostages into Gaza. Although Channel 7 reported that he had no formal connection with Hamas’ militant wing, Airwars has categorised Asim as a militant based on this action and not included him within the civilian casualty count.
Abu Hatab delivered daily messages in front of Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Yunis. According to Wafa News, he submitted his last message in front of the hospital an hour before his killing. Laith_ziod reported on ‘Twitter/X’ that Abu Hatab was ‘broadcasting live on the 9 o’clock bulletin from Gaza,’ also noting that the correspondent had planned to go home to rest with his family and check on them, before the strike hit, shortly after he entered the apartment, killing him and at least 11 others, including his family members.
Muhammad Salim Abu Hatab (also known as Abu Asim) was 51 years old and was killed alongside his wife, 47-year-old Abeer Ismail (Abu Qouta) Abu Hatab. Their son, 16-year-old Rashid Muhammad Salim Abu Hatab, and daughter 20-year-old Sajida Muhammad Salim Abu Hatab, were also killed. Muhammed’s brother Islam Abu Hatab, who was 48 years old, was killed alongside his 7-year-old son, Salim Islam Abu Hatab and his four daughters, 9-year-old Sara Islam Salim Abu Hatab, 14-year-old Aya Islam Salim Abu Hatab, 16-year-old Dina Islam Salim Abu Hatab and Rasha Islam Abu Hatab. Rasha’s husband, 26-year-old Fayez Akram Abu Jamea, was also killed in the same incident.
A report from Channel 7 stated that another individual, Alaa, had also been involved in the kidnapping and was killed in the same strike as Asim. However, this was not widely reported by other sources. Airwars has therefore included the belligerent range as 1-2 to account for this uncertainty.
An image shared by Rashid to his personal Facebook account shows him holding a gun. However, given his age, coupled with the fact that Airwars found no information explicitly connecting him to a particular militant group, Rashid has been assessed as a civilian. This will be updated should additional information come to light.
In terms of Asim’s militant status, Channel 7 reported that an individual named Asim kidnapped 85-year-old Yaffa Adar on October 7th. On November 3rd, Facebook user Sharif Abdel Qader Abu Muslim shared an image of Asim in a car, an older woman smiling behind him. Superimposed on the image, in Arabic, is text reading “Because the detained elderly woman was in Asim’s car, and a video appeared of him with her on October 7.” Twitter user @ansammmml shared a similar image, without the text, in which another man, likely named Alaa, is seen sitting next to the woman, identified as Yaffa.
The victims were taken to Nasser Hospital following the incident, according to Akhbar Al Aan. A funeral took place for the journalist the following morning, attended by hundreds of mourners. Images of the funeral shared on Facebook by an account called Palestina Dan Al Aqsha showed Abu Hatabs body, which was wrapped in a white shroud, with a press vest draped over him and a microphone on his chest.
Before his death, Abu Hatab, delivering his final broadcast, said: “Hospital refrigerators are still full of martyrs, and there are still under the rubble citizens and martyrs who were bombed and whose homes are over their heads”.
In a video shared by Palestine Satellite Channel on Facebook, Salman Al-Bashir, a Palestinian TV reporter, is visibly devastated upon learning about the death of his colleague while reporting live. He is seen removing his helmet and press vest and throwing the vest to the ground. Standing outside Nasser Hospital, where Muhammed Abu Hateb reported, Al-Bashir says “We can’t take it anymore, nothing protects us…not this vest, not this helmet…”.
Multiple sources published a Palestine TV statement on the incident which accused Israel of carrying out a ‘deliberate assassination’ on the journalist and his family.
The New York Times published that, after the incident, the Israeli military said that after a review, it was “not aware of any military activity conducted by our forces in the vicinity of the location in question.”
The New York Times also published images showing the destruction of the apartment, where the alleged strike can be seen to have taken out the entire second floor of the building. Other images showed furniture and children’s clothes and books half buried under rubble.
The Palestinian Ministry of Information acknowledged the killing of journalist Abu Hatab and the members of his family. In a statement, the Ministry recognised the importance of the work that the journalist did during his career.
Images shared to Facebook by user “Almawke 360” showed what remained of the Abu Hatab home. One image also showed the fragment of a munition. This fragment was identified by the Open Source Munitions Portal (OSMP1132) as being part of a GBU-39 bomb. The GBU-39 is a guided air-to-surface munition.
Where possible, names have been reconciled with published Palestinian Ministry of Health lists. With thanks to journalist Alexandre Horn from CheckNews for identifying relevant sources, and Data Tech for Palestine for centralising the datasets.
Where sources mentioned a belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to Israeli forces.
This incident was updated on February 21, 2025. Updated to include information from a report shared by Israeli news outlet Channel 7, Asim Muhammad Abu Hatab assessed civilian status was changed to militant. In addition, a second individual, Alaa, has been added to the upper range of militants killed. Airwars is including Alaa in only the upper range due to the fact that Airwars has found only one source referencing Alaa’s death, and that the available information says that Alaa killed in the same strike as Asim, rather than explicitly stating that he was killed in a November 2nd strike in Khan Younis.