Moamen Abu AlOuf, a 19-year-old Palestinian freelance photographer, was killed on the evening of June 9, 2025, while documenting the rescue efforts of medical teams retrieving casualties after an Israeli shelling of a Palestinian home in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City. He was accompanying paramedic teams to document the aftermath of an earlier strike that had already left several civilians dead or wounded. As soon as the medical crews began retrieving the bodies and tending to the injured, Israeli artillery fire from a tank directly targeted them. The strike killed Abu AlOuf instantly, along with three paramedics and some of the wounded survivors from the earlier attack.
Abu AlOuf had been living in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and had spent the entire war covering events across Gaza City and the northern part of the Strip. He had documented sieges on hospitals, mass casualties, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. His work—posted regularly to his Instagram account, which had more than 78,000 followers—offered a steady stream of photos, videos, and news updates from the ground. His reporting gave visibility to the suffering endured in areas largely inaccessible to international media.
According to his brother Majd, Moamen was torn to pieces by the direct impact of the tank shell. Initially, rescue teams were prevented from recovering the bodies due to the Israeli army’s refusal to grant access to the site. It wasn’t until the following morning that civil defense teams managed to retrieve their remains, found in fragments.
Friends and colleagues say Moamen had received multiple threats before his death. After the news of his killing broke, a screenshot of one of the threatening messages he had received from Israeli phone numbers was shared on his Instagram account by friends. Videos of his mother mourning at his funeral circulated widely online, as did WhatsApp messages and videos he had recently sent to friends, discussing the possibility of his own death.
The Israel Defense Forces, when contacted by the Committee to Protect Journalists, claimed they were not aware of the incident involving Abu AlOuf’s death but said they would review the claims.
Moamen Abu AlOuf is remembered not only for his bravery as a young journalist but also for the raw immediacy of his storytelling. He documented his homeland’s destruction with the hope of making it seen and understood by the outside world. In the absence of formal investigations or accountability, his death stands as yet another tragic example of the lethal risks faced by those reporting from Gaza. His camera is gone, but his images remain—fragments of truth from a war that continues to silence too many voices.
Gianluca Costantini’s artistic project dedicated to journalists killed in Palestine is a powerful act of visual memory and political denunciation. Through drawing, Costantini portrays — one by one — the reporters, photographers, cameramen, and media workers who have lost their lives in the conflict, particularly since the escalation of violence that began in October 2023 between Israel and Hamas.
The initiative, titled “Portraits of Journalists in the Israel-Gaza Conflict”, is created in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based international organization that monitors press freedom worldwide. The complete series — composed of over 180 portraits — is available online at channeldraw.org.
Each drawing is an individual tribute: a face, a name, a date of death, and, in some cases, brief words describing who they were, what they did, and where they were killed. The essential quality of Costantini’s line, characteristic of his style, merges with the urgency of testimony. The project has a dual purpose: to restore humanity to victims too often reduced to numbers, and to denounce the systematic violation of the right to information in the Palestinian territories.
The project also functions as an artistic and political archive, regularly updated, offering a visual counter-narrative to dominant silences or distorted media coverage. Costantini, who has long been active in graphic journalism and human rights illustration, uses the language of art to defend the memory of those who documented the truth until their last moment.
The drawings have been shared by NGOs, international media, and activists around the world, becoming tools of mobilization and solidarity. In a context where press freedom is under threat, Costantini’s work reminds us that reporting on war can cost lives — but forgetting the fallen journalists means killing them a second time.
