PARIS – Professional photo and video journalists working in Gaza are to receive an annual press freedom award on June 1 for risking their lives to report on the war, an association of publishers has said.

The 2026 Golden Pen of Freedom will be handed to representatives of global news agencies still operating in Gaza – Agence France-Presse (AFP), The Associated Press and Reuters – “whose local journalists continue to provide consistent, professional coverage under extremely challenging conditions”, said the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

“For over two and a half years, journalists in Gaza have recorded death, destruction and human suffering in unparalleled terms,” reads the citation of the award. “They are as much victims of the conflict as they are chroniclers of a war that erupted – and continues – around them.”

War broke out in Gaza after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7, 2023, triggering an Israeli military campaign.

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says Israeli forces have killed more than 220 journalists, at least 70 of whom were killed in the context of their professional duties.

The Israeli army says it never deliberately targets journalists. But since October 2023, it has claimed to have killed a number of people who it says were Palestinian militant “terrorists” working under the guise of being media professionals.

AFP photographer Mohammed Abed, who worked in Gaza until April 2024 before joining its Cairo bureau, will be among those at the ceremony in the French city of Marseille....