Trapped and Targeted: How Gaza’s Local Journalists Reported a War They Could Not Escape

How do journalists cover a war when they are themselves caught in its violence, and when their closeness to the conflict is used to discredit them as witnesses?

That question lies at the heart of “Inside Gaza,” a new documentary following reporters from the global news agency AFP who were trapped inside the territory as Israel launched a devastating response to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Director Hélène Lam Trong places these seasoned news professionals before the camera, revealing how they reconciled the demands of covering a massive military campaign with the struggle to survive as their city was destroyed and their families, friends, and colleagues were killed.

“Most international correspondents cover a war or a news event and then return home to safety,” Lam Trong, a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker, told AFP in Los Angeles, where the film screened at The American French Film Festival.

“Palestinian journalists could not do that. They were trapped alongside Gaza’s civilian population, with no way out. As the days passed, they themselves became victims of the war.”

Questioned

The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killed more than 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and armed fighters took more than 200 hostages.

Israel almost immediately sealed Gaza’s borders and barred international journalists from entering.

It then launched an enormous military campaign, reducing swathes of Gaza to rubble in strikes that have killed 73,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the UN.

Unable to send reinforcements, AFP relied entirely on its local staff—experienced reporters, photographers, and video journalists, many of whom had worked abroad—to document Gaza’s descent into violence and despair.

Without their work, distributed to AFP’s thousands of media clients, the outside world would have had little insight into what was unfolding inside Gaza, Lam Trong said.

Assembled from footage gathered by the team on the ground and from interviews conducted after they finally left, the film captures the journalists’ frustration at seeing their reporting either doubted or never published at all.

In one scene, the team describes their dismay as Israeli propagandists claimed that authentic photographs of a dead child had been staged with a doll.

“At AFP, our photos, news reports, and videos are used by media outlets around the world. But in this war, some of our images were never used,” said Gaza bureau chief Adel Zaanoun.

“It worried us, even terrified us, because from the very first days, the thousands of Palestinians killed seemed not to count for the media.”

The Cost of Reporting

At a time when audiences are drifting toward unmoderated social media platforms and politicians increasingly attack outlets that publish stories they dislike, Lam Trong argues it is essential that the public understand how newsgathering works—including the risks borne by those who do it.

Those risks include becoming targets themselves. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, roughly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

AFP’s Gaza office, which was transmitting a live feed to clients, was struck—likely by Israeli tank fire, according to an investigation by the agency and other international media organizations.

“In Gaza in particular, journalism and journalists have become central issues, as they have been killed, attacked, and persecuted,” Lam Trong said.

“We do not deserve to be accused of propaganda when we are reporting from the ground,” she added.

A recipient of the Albert Londres Prize—often described as the French equivalent of the Pulitzer—Lam Trong hopes the film, which has won numerous international awards and is eligible for Oscar contention, will amplify the case for journalism’s importance.

The awards campaign, she said, is “an opportunity to bring a very important message to Hollywood: that press freedom is under threat and that we must defend journalists—not just journalism, but the journalists themselves.”

AFP’s staff left Gaza in 2024. The agency continues its impartial coverage of the region through trusted freelance contributors.

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