Four Palestinian journalists were killed today by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, their unions and a local public official said.

A total of eight Palestinian journalists have been killed since Saturday.

Earlier, the Gaza journalists’ union reported three deaths.

The director of the Hamas government’s media office, Salameh Maarouf, announced the names of the victims: Said al-Taweel, director of the Al-Khamisa news agency, photojournalist Mohammed Sobok, and Hisham Nawaihah, a correspondent for a local media. All of them were killed in shelling while covering the evacuation of a block of flats near Gaza City’s fishing port, Maarouf said, condemning “Israel’s criminal behavior towards journalists”.

An AFP correspondent said reporters had stood tens of meters from the building after a resident received a phone call from the Israeli army informing him that an attack was imminent and the apartment building had to be evacuated. Eyewitnesses said the Israeli shelling hit another building, closer to where the journalists were.

A little bit later the union of Palestinian journalists reported that the head of the Committee of Women Journalists, Salam Khalil, was killed along with her husband and children when their home in the northern Gaza Strip was shelled.

Another journalist, Asad Shamlah, was killed on Sunday. Ten others were injured and two are missing. On Saturday, photojournalist Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, reporter Mohammad Zargoun and Mohammad El Salhi were killed in separate incidents, according to Palestinian sources and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.