UNESCO announced Thursday that it is awarding this year’s world press freedom prize to all Palestinian journalists covering the war in the Gaza Strip who have been decimated in the past nearly seven months of Israeli military operations in the enclave, in retaliation for the attack military arm of Hamas in southern Israel.

“In these times of uncertainty and despair, we wish to send a strong message of solidarity and recognition to the Palestinian journalists covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances,” said Mauricio Weibel, president of the International Jury of Media Professionals.

“Humanity owes them a huge debt, for their courage and their commitment to freedom of expression,” he added.

Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Training Organization, said for her part that the award underscored how “collective action is important to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to deliver their necessary work to inform and investigate”.

According to the numbers of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-governmental organization based in New York, from October 7 to May 1 at least 97 journalists and media workers lost their lives in the Israel/Hamas war, 92 of whom were Palestinians. Sixteen others were injured.

The war broke out on October 7, when an unprecedented raid by Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel killed 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Another 250-plus people were abducted and taken to the Palestinian enclave. According to Israeli sources, 129 of them remain in the Gaza Strip, but at least 35 are believed to be dead.

The broad military operation launched by Israel in retaliation in the Palestinian enclave, vowing to wipe out Hamas, has killed at least 34,596 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Islamist movement’s health ministry.