Media companies from Germany are demanding that the governments of Israel and Egypt should grant their journalists access to report on the conflict in the Gaza Strip.

In an open letter published on Tuesday, the organisations said that after almost a year of war, the governments had been preventing journalists from reporting “unaccompanied and independently” in Gaza.

“The almost total exclusion of international media from a crisis of this enormous global scope is unprecedented in recent history,” it noted.

The letter was signed by editors-in-chief and directors of both public and private national media organisations, including some of the country’s biggest outlets such as news journal Der Spiegel, daily newspaper Die Zeit and tabloid Bild.

It was also signed by dpa editor-in-chief Sven Gösmann, who said, “Nothing is more truthful than the eyewitness accounts of independent journalists, especially for us as a news agency.”

It added, “That’s why we support the demand to enable this independent reporting.”

The open letter was sent on Monday and was personally addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.

It said that the news organisations “are not a party to the conflict” and that those who make independent reporting on this war impossible are damaging their credibility.

“Anyone who prohibits us from working in the Gaza Strip is creating the conditions for human rights to be violated,” the letter said.

The war began after the attack by terrorists from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.

More than 1,200 people were killed in Israel in the attack, and around 250 others were taken hostage in Gaza.

According to the local authorities, which Hamas controls, the number of people killed in Gaza since the start of the war has risen to more than 41,000.

The figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians and is almost impossible to verify.

(dpa/NAN)