Israeli attacks on two newspaper offices in Yemen earlier this month killed 31 journalists, making it the second deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Al Jazeera reported. 

The CPJ reported that Nasser al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of September 26, one of the outlets targeted, described the killings as an “unprecedented massacre of journalists”.

The Israeli attack also indicates that Israel’s deadly practice of targeting reporters and newsrooms labelled as spreading “terrorist” propaganda has become firmly established throughout the Middle East, the CPJ report said.

“Israel’s attack on Yemen echoes previous strikes on Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, where it has repeatedly failed to distinguish between military targets and journalists, justifying its assassinations by smearing journalists as terrorists or propagandists, without credible evidence,” read a CPJ statement.