Anas Jamal Mahmoud Al-Sharif (Arabic: أنس جمال محمود الشريف; 3 December 1996 – 10 August 2025) was a Palestinian journalist and videographer for Al Jazeera Arabic, known for his frontline reporting from northern Gaza during the Gaza war. In 2024, Al-Sharif's Reuters team was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for their "raw and urgent" photos documenting the Gaza war.
Al-Sharif was killed along with four journalists and two others in an Israeli airstrike targeting him and other journalists in a tent outside the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on 10 August 2025. At the time of his death, 234 journalists had been killed during the Gaza war. Prior to his killing, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accused Al-Sharif of being a Hamas operative. Human rights organizations and Al Jazeera said this was an excuse to justify the killing of journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had called on the international community to protect him.
According to his brother, Israel offered Al-Sharif safe passage out of Gaza four days before he was killed if he stopped reporting, but he refused.
Al-Sharif was born in the Jabalia refugee camp in 1996, to a family displaced in 1948 from Al-Majdal (today the Israeli city of Ashkelon). As a child, Al-Sharif was interviewed in an Al-Jazeera broadcast during the 2008 Gaza war and stated that he wanted to be a journalist. He graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a bachelor's degree in mass communication, specializing in radio and television.
Before the Gaza war, Al-Sharif worked as a freelance photographer for multiple outlets, including the Al-Shamal Media Network. While reporting on the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests near Jabalia, Al-Sharif sustained a shrapnel injury to his abdomen. While CNN and the BBC reported that he had allegedly worked with a Hamas media team, he later criticized the organization's negotiating team in 2025. According to a Novara Media report published in August 2025, the BBC ignored a correction request which sought to clarify that, while a source had claimed he worked with Hamas, Al Jazeera denied this, and the BBC's own correspondent saw no evidence to support the claim. Despite the correction request, the original statement remained unchanged.
Al-Sharif was married and had two young children.
Al-Sharif became one of the most visible faces reporting on the Gaza war, refusing to evacuate the north despite repeated Israeli orders and direct threats to his life. He continued daily coverage through airstrikes, massacres, and displacement, often working under extreme danger and chronic shortages of basic supplies. His reporting provided footage and testimony from one of the most inaccessible war zones globally.
At the beginning of the Gaza war, Al-Sharif was working as a photographer when Tamer Almisshal recruited him as a TV reporter for Al Jazeera Arabic. He appeared on the air almost daily for the entirety of his time at Al Jazeera. In November 2023, the Israeli military called him and told him to stop reporting and leave northern Gaza. Additionally they sent him messages indicating that they knew his location. A few weeks later, his family home in Jabalia was targeted in an Israeli airstrike, killing his father. Due to poor health, his father had been unable to evacuate their home with the rest of their family. He was buried on the grounds of a school being used to shelter displaced people. At the time, Al-Sharif was the fourth Al-Jazeera journalist to have relatives killed by the IDF during the Gaza war. The CPJ said it was alarmed by the IDF's attacks on journalists' families.
In early 2024, Al-Sharif reported on the lack of food in northern Gaza. In one video, he described children trying to salvage animal feed for bread. In May, Al-Sharif's Reuters team was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for their "raw and urgent" photos documenting the Gaza war.
Ismail Al-Ghoul, his Al Jazeera colleague and close friend, was killed by the IDF in July. Al-Sharif reported from the hospital where Al-Ghoul's body was brought. He made a speech holding Al-Ghoul's damaged press vest, condemning Al-Ghoul's killing and pledging to continue reporting. He later told The Nation that reporting on Al-Ghoul's death was one of his hardest experiences as a journalist.
A week later, Al-Sharif reported on the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on the Al-Tabaeen School, which was sheltering thousands of displaced people. He stated that almost 100 Palestinians had been massacred at dawn and called the scene indescribable. Tamer Almisshal tweeted a message of support for Al-Sharif. IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee responded, accusing Al-Sharif of lying to conceal the presence of Palestinian militants at the school. Al-Jazeera denounced the accusations as intimidation and slander of Al-Sharif's character, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a statement of concern for Al-Sharif's safety. Al-Sharif later described the aftermath of the attack: "Pieces of children, women, the elderly, and young men lay intertwined on the ground, side-by-side, as they had been when they gathered for dawn prayers. This massacre left a deep wound in my soul, one that time can never heal."
In early October, the IDF fired on a group of journalists, including Al-Sharif and Hossam Shabat, while they were filming a report in Jabalia about the siege of North Gaza. Cameraman Fadi Al-Wahidi was shot in the neck, paralyzing him. Unable to find an ambulance or take him to the nearby Al-Awda hospital because it was besieged by the IDF, the journalists drove him to another hospital while he bled. Al-Sharif tweeted a photo of Al-Wahidi on the ground after the shooting, noting that he was wearing his press vest. As Al-Wahidi's condition worsened, Al-Sharif called for his evacuation out of Gaza. Later that month, the IDF released a list of six Al-Jazeera journalists, including Al-Sharif and Shabat, and accused them of being Palestinian militants. Al-Jazeera condemned the allegations as false. The CPJ accused Israel of making unsubstantiated claims against Al-Sharif, as it did after killing Ismail Al-Ghoul. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that Israel was trying to "systematically eliminate journalists" in Gaza.
After Al-Sharif's Instagram account was suspended in November, he created a new one and accused Meta of censoring Palestinian content. In December, Amnesty International Australia recognized Al-Sharif with a Human Rights Defender award for continuing to report despite Israeli attacks on journalists. He dedicated his award to journalists in Gaza. Later that month, Al-Sharif reported on an Israeli airstrike which targeted a clearly marked press van near Al-Awda Hospital, killing five journalists from Al-Quds Today. He stated that one of the journalists was waiting for his wife to give birth to their first child at the hospital.
A ceasefire was declared in January 2025, and a video of Al-Sharif's broadcast went viral on social media. In it, Al-Sharif announces the ceasefire and removes his protective gear, stating: "I am taking off the helmet that tired me, and this armor that has become an extension of my body". Cheering bystanders raise him on their shoulders in celebration.
In March, Israel broke the ceasefire. A week later, the IDF killed Hossam Shabat in a targeted airstrike on his vehicle. Al-Sharif participated in Shabat's funeral procession. On social media, he mourned Shabat's death and posted that Israel had "sanctioned the killing of all of us". Five months before killing Shabat, Israel had accused him and five other Al-Jazeera journalists of being militants, including Al-Sharif. Al-Sharif told Drop Site News that Shabat had wanted him to continue reporting and that he would do so until his death despite the IDF's threats.
As the starvation in Gaza intensified in July, Al-Sharif posted online that he was "drowning in hunger". In a broadcast on 20 July, Al-Sharif was visibly distraught, calling the starvation a "slow death", as an apparently malnourished woman fainted behind him. A bystander told him: "Keep going Anas, you are our voice". Video of the broadcast went viral on social media. The IDF dismissed the video as contrived, and according to the CPJ, escalated their smear campaign against Al-Sharif. Shortly before his death, Al-Sharif posted on social media about the IDF's bombing of Gaza City.