Separate investigations by the AFP, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International into the death of Issam Abdallah and the injuries inflicted on six other journalists on October 13 in southern Lebanon also point to “Israeli strikes.”

An investigation by Reuters, published on Thursday, into the bombing that killed one of its journalists and wounded six others, including two from Agence France Presse (AFP), in southern Lebanon on October 13, points to Israeli tank fire.

On October 13, Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in strikes in southern Lebanon. The strikes also wounded six reporters: two from Reuters, two from the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, and two from AFP, including photographer Christina Assi, who was seriously injured and is still hospitalized.

Like AFP, Reuters conducted an extensive investigation based on evidence gathered from eyewitness accounts, analysis of video recordings, satellite images and fragments found on-site.

These fragments were studied on behalf of Reuters by the laboratory of the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), an independent institute specializing in the analysis of munitions and armaments, which counts the Dutch Ministry of Defense among its clients.

According to TNO, one of the metal fragments found at the scene was a fin from a 120 mm Israeli tank shell. The AFP investigation published earlier on Thursday also refers to this type of ammunition. TNO also carried out audio analyses of the two strikes that targeted the group, based on a live video shot by Al-Jazeera, as well as a video from Italy’s RAI channel showing the start of fire of the second shot.

According to these analyses, the successive strikes were fired from a distance of 1.3 km from the journalists. Their audio signature is identical, demonstrating that they were both tank shells fired from the same location.

TNO’s experts believe that the strikes were fired from a military post in the Israeli town of Jordeikh, not far from the UN demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon, corroborating the findings of the AFP investigation.

“The evidence we now have, and have published today, shows that an Israeli tank crew killed our colleague Issam Abdallah,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni stated. “We call on Israel to explain how this could have happened and to hold to account those responsible for his death and the wounding of Christina Assi of the AFP, our colleagues Thaier Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, and the three other journalists,” she said.

Independent investigations by HRW and Amnesty International, also published on Thursday, point to the use of an Israeli-made 120 mm tank shell in the first strike.