Dozens of Lebanese journalists and civilians gathered on Thursday morning for the funeral of veteran reporter Amal Khalil, after she was killed by Israeli forces in south Lebanon a day earlier.
Crowds also gathered in Beirut to protest Israel's killing of the journalist and to demand accountability for the repeated targeting of media workers.
Khalil was killed in Baisariyeh while she and colleague Zeinab Faraj were reporting on Israeli violations of the 10-day ceasefire. The pair had been documenting an Israeli strike on a vehicle on Wednesday that killed two people, before fleeing to a nearby building for shelter as bombardment intensified.
Colleagues said that at 4:10pm local time Khalil made a final call to family members and the Lebanese army, and that was the last time anyone heard from her.
A subsequent double-tap strike killed Khalil, while rescue teams attempting to reach her were prevented from doing so by further Israeli attacks.
Lebanon’s health ministry said emergency crews were forced to retreat because of the intensity of the strikes.
Her body was later recovered from beneath the rubble shortly before midnight, making her the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year.
Reports on Thursday said Khalil had previously received threats from an Israeli WhatsApp number during earlier Israeli offensives on Lebanon. Screenshots of the messages showed warnings ordering her to stop reporting or leave Lebanon if "she wanted her head to remain on her shoulders".
Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil received the first Israeli threat on 25 August 2024, warning that she would be beheaded if she did not leave South Lebanon. In additional messages that same day, the sender cited personal details about her life to signal that she was being…
— Cilina Nasser (@CilinaNasser) April 23, 2026 Who was Amal? The 43-year-old was a renowned journalist at the prominent newspaper Al-Akhbar and had covered the conflict with Israel since 2006.
Dozens of journalists paid tribute to her on Thursday, describing her as "unshakeable" and "devoted".
Away from work, friends said she enjoyed planting fruit trees with her father in the courtyard of the family home and caring for stray cats.
In an interview with The Public Source in January, Khalil spoke about growing up under Israeli occupation, displacement, her commitment to truth-telling, and how repeated Israeli attacks shaped her worldview.
She said she joined Al-Akhbar when it was newly founded, initially writing on social issues, before heading south during the July 2006 war to report on Israel’s bombing campaign.
"I met families from border villages like Srifa, Houla, and Shaqra, and began writing their stories. I sent them to Al-Akhbar, and they began publishing the stories in their trial issues. When the ceasefire took effect on August 14, 2006, at 8 a.m., I accompanied the returnees to their villages," she said.
Throughout her career, Khalil said she faced threats, assaults and intimidation, but remained defiant.
"The pressure to break me was relentless, but I didn’t yield," she said.
By 2011, her reporting had earned her a reputation strong enough that she was assigned responsibility for covering all of south Lebanon.
"Through my work, I have tried to be in solidarity with these people — the people of the land. I have tried to document recurring Israeli aggressions, beyond the wars and bombardments of 2006 and 2023. The times Zionists tried to grab land here and there, I was always on the lookout," she said.
Amal Khalil, killed today by Israel in cold blood, worked within a shrinking media space where documentation carries incredible risk. Her reporting consistently moved beyond the moment of aggression to record the social aftermath of Israeli attacks in south Lebanon, preserving… pic.twitter.com/qHwQZWYrAw — roqayah chamseddine (@roqchams) April 22, 2026 Ali Khalil, her brother, described her as being "present in every home" and that her loss was felt in every Lebanese home.
"She was simple and was loved, and in her last video, she was helping people, and everyone saw it," he said. "But [...] no one helped her yesterday. She stayed there for two hours under the rubble, and we waited for permission, I don’t know from who, to save her life; and maybe she would have been here speaking now instead of me."
Ali Khalil, the brother of martyred Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who was reporting alongside Al Akhbar colleague Zeinab Faraj (who is in stable condition after undergoing emergency surgery) when she was deliberately targeted and subsequently killed by Israel yesterday:
"Amal… pic.twitter.com/VjyI4eybZP — roqayah chamseddine (@roqchams) April 23, 2026 Yazan al-Saadi, editor at The New Arab who previously worked alongside Khalil, described her killing as part of Israel's systematic targeting of Arab journalists.
"This has been going on for a long, long time. We’ve seen it in Gaza, in Lebanon multiple times, in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. This is horrifying as an Arab journalist; there is clearly no protection, and there is a desperate need for people and communities to organise together and really work to stop this," he said.
"Reports from rights organisations or appeals to international law are not working in these genocidal times," he added.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, slammed Israel, saying it had carried out war crimes by targeting and killing journalists.
"Targeting journalists, obstructing access to them by relief teams, and even targeting their locations again after these teams arrive constitutes war crimes," he said in a post on X.
"Israel's targeting of media workers in the south while they carry out their professional duties is no longer isolated incidents, but has become an established approach that we condemn and reject, as do all international laws and conventions," the statement from him continued.