US contractors at a Gaza aid centre interrogated a source of Middle East Eye journalist Mohamed Salama seeking information about his identity and whereabouts before he was killed, MEE can reveal.
Salama was killed alongside MEE reporter Ahmed Abu Aziz and three other journalists on Monday morning as they responded to an attack on Nasser hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. The two strikes killed 20 Palestinians overall, including medics and first responders.
Days before, a source for one of Salama’s major investigations for MEE told him that they had been briefly detained at an aid distribution centre by US security contractors guarding the site.
There, the source said, they had been interrogated about the identity of the reporter behind the story. Salama worked on the story anonymously for security reasons.
“The source would not have been in contact with me unless they thought something was deeply wrong,” Salama told colleagues at the time.
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When asked if he felt safe knowing he was being pursued for his work, Salama replied: “We journalists are never safe in Gaza.”
Middle East Eye asked Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, the two US security firms working at the aid distribution sites, whether they were involved in the source’s interrogation.
MEE also asked if their employees were passing intelligence to Israel on the identity of Palestinian journalists such as Salama.
They had not replied by the time of publication.
Israel has maintained a total siege on Gaza since March, only allowing a modicum of food to enter after monopolising aid distribution through the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), sidelining the UN.
Since the GHF began operating in May, at least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid, according to the UN.
The UN says that most of those were killed by the Israel military, which monitors the hubs, but several former employees of the contractors guarding the sites have come forward in recent weeks saying they witnessed both Israeli soldiers and their US colleagues shooting at Palestinians.
The GHF has repeatedly denied that aid seekers have been shot at its sites.
Middle East Eye asked the GHF and Israeli military for comment. The GHF called the allegation that the source was interrogated at one of its sites “absurd and completely false”.
Israeli media tells a different story
Since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began 22 months ago, Salama has contributed video and written reports for Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera that have attracted international attention.
When the BBC pulled a documentary profiling a Palestinian boy in response to an intense pro-Israel campaign earlier this year, Salama interviewed the 13-year-old who had found himself at the centre of a British media storm as well as a war.
In March, he also reported on a mass grave containing the bodies of 15 medics, who had been bound and then shot in the chest, back and head. Salama was one of the very first to publish details about the apparent Israeli massacre and speak to the victims’ relatives.
Earlier this month, Salama identified a frail 10-year-old boy who a whistleblower said had been gunned down while trying to receive food at an Israeli- and US-backed GHF aid centre.
He discovered that Abdulrahim “Amir” al-Jarabe’a’s family had not been told he had been killed or received his body.
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International condemnation has been mounting in response to the journalists’ killing, which was captured on live television.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incident as a “tragic mishap”.
The Israeli military said that Golani Brigade troops were targeting a camera used by Hamas, providing no evidence or explanation for the second strike 15 minutes after the first.
Meanwhile, military sources have been painting a different picture to the Israeli media.
Channel 14, a right-wing outlet known to be supportive of Netanyahu’s government and the war, reported military sources as saying the attack killed “terrorists disguised as journalists”.
The sources said that soldiers targeted a Hamas “terror headquarters” in Nasser hospital.
“According to the current security concept, any place where terrorists operate, whether it used to be a school or a hospital, becomes a legitimate target,” the report said.
Soldiers involved in the strike told Channel 14 that “the attack was approved and coordinated with the senior command, and they knew about it before it was carried out”.
Similarly, news site Maariv reported that “the shooting was carried out after receiving approvals from the command levels”.
Following Netanyahu’s framing of the incident as a “mishap”, senior Israeli military officials reiterated to Channel 14: “We support the soldiers – they acted as required.”
Israel has killed 246 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since October 2023. Often it attempts to discredit the victims by falsely accusing them of ties to Hamas.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war began.
