The Agence France Presse news agency said that his freelance journalists in Gaza are constantly suffering from health problems, while a trade union warns that they will die “without immediate intervention”.
The news agency has been working with one freelance reporter, three photographers and six freelance video journalists in the Gaza Strip since her own staff fled the territory torn by war in 2024, according to the Society of Journalists at AFP Union.
“They spend so much time and energy to find food and only they just feel so weak,” Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director of AFP, NPR told “They talk about constant headache, constant dizziness. So only the ability physically, you know, a story is reduced.”
“Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die,” the trade union said in its own statement. “With a few others, they are now the only ones who report what is happening in Gaza. The International Press is forbidden to enter this territory for almost two years.”
American veterans attacked, injured during the distribution of help in Gaza with a group supported by the US
An air raid affects a building in the Al-Nasr neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on July 21, 2025. (Saeed MMT Jaras/Anadolu via Getty images)
“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can remember that we have seen a colleague of hunger die. We refuse to die,” added in one Post on X.
The union said that the main photographer in Gaza, who identified it as Bashar, wrote on Facebook on Saturday that “I no longer have the power to work for the media. My body is thin and I can no longer work.”
“Bashar, 30, works and lives under the same circumstances such as all Gazans, who go from one refugee camp to the other in the midst of Israeli bomb attacks. He has lived in absolute poverty for more than a year and has been taking enormous risks to do his work. Hygiene is an important problem for him, with the Journalist’s society,” the Journal of the Journal.
“Since February, Bashar has been living in the ruins of his house in Gaza City with his mother, four brothers and sisters and the family of one of his brothers. Their house is completely without facilities or comfort, shared with a few cousins. On Sunday morning he reported that one of his brothers had ‘fallen’, ”, it added.
Dozens of killed Palestinians, almost 200 injured while they are on their way to gather help in Gaza
Palestinians push to receive a hot meal in a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025. (AFP via Getty Images)
The union said that each of his freelance journalists in Gaza receives a monthly salary from the AFP, but there is almost nothing to buy – or what is available is priceless. ”
Representatives of the AP and Reuters also expressed their concern about their teams there, but would not say how many people work for them.
“We are very concerned about our employees in Gaza and do everything we can to support them,” says Lauren Easton, a spokeswoman for the Associated Press. “We are very proud of the work that our team continues to do under terrible circumstances to keep the world informed of what is happening on the ground.”
Reuters said that daily contact with his freelance journalists, and that “the extreme difficulty to find food leads to their and all residents of Gaza who experience more hunger and illness.”
A demonstrator has a drawing lecture in Arabic “A hungry journalist writes a report on the hungry” during a protest by journalists against hunger in the Rimal district in Gaza City on July 19, 2025. (Omar al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty images)
Click here to get the Fox News app
The agency said it yields extra money to help them.
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
