Palestinians mourn local journalists Hassouna Sleem and Sary Mansour, who were killed in an Israeli strike on a house, at a hospital in the central Gaza Strip. (Photo by Reuters)

Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza has taken a heavy toll on journalists who cover the regime’s bloody aggression against the besieged territory.

A US-based rights advocacy organization said on Thursday the Israeli aggression on Gaza is the most dangerous situation for journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the first 10 weeks of the regime’s genocide were the deadliest recorded ever for journalists, with the most journalists killed in a single year in one location.

More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year, the CPJ said in a statement.

More than half the deaths - 37 - occurred during the first month of the war, making it the deadliest single month ever documented by CPJ since it began recording journalist fatalities in 1992, it added.

It also expressed concerns over what it described as an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.

CPJ called an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military, noting that it had recorded at least one instance in which a journalist was killed while wearing marked press insignia with no fighting in the surrounding area.

The concentration of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war is unparalleled in CPJ’s history and underscores how grave the situation is for press on the ground, CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg said.

Local Palestinian journalists continue to report from Gaza while living in fear for their lives.

The CPJ said this issue, along with the intense bombardment of Gaza, has prevented foreign journalists from independently accessing the situation in Gaza.

Some 68 reporters and media workers have been killed since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza started on October 7, 61 of them Palestinian.

The regime has been also deliberately killing journalists’ families who serve as a source for investigators looking into how those journalists died.