The anniversary brought a renewed call for answers from The Associated Press and Reuters. In a joint statement published on Aug. 25, 2026, the organizations said they were still seeking a full explanation from Israeli authorities, accountability for the deaths and access for international journalists to Gaza.

What happened at Nasser Hospital

The strikes occurred on Aug. 25, 2025, at Nasser Hospital, one of the few functioning locations in Gaza supplying live video to newsrooms around the world, according to AP’s anniversary reporting.

AP reported that the first strike killed Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri and another person. Journalists and rescue workers then moved toward the scene. A second strike killed 20 people, including visual journalist Mariam Dagga, who worked with AP and other news organizations. Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist whose work had been published by Reuters, was also among the five journalists identified in the AP-Reuters statement.

AP reported that footage and eyewitness accounts indicated that those killed in the second strike were unarmed. The news organizations said their journalists were at the hospital in their professional capacity.

Israel’s stated rationale remains disputed

Israeli officials said the military was targeting a suspected Hamas camera on the hospital roof. They later said six of those killed were linked to Hamas. AP reported that the military did not provide evidence for that claim in the account cited here.

AP’s new reporting adds an allegation from an Israeli soldier who spoke anonymously because of fear of retribution. The soldier said the camera belonged to al-Masri and that the military found no evidence connecting it to Hamas. The soldier also said none of the six people later described by Israel as Hamas-linked was the intended target.

AP reported that it confirmed some details of the soldier’s account and that the account was consistent with the military’s public response. Breaking the Silence, an organization founded by Israeli veterans, said it corroborated the account with its own sources.

That account is not a final investigative finding. Israel’s military has not accepted it and declined to address AP’s detailed questions while the incident remained under review.

No public timetable for a criminal-investigation decision

The military told AP that the incident was still being examined. It said findings would be transferred to the Military Advocate General’s Corps, which would decide whether to open a criminal investigation. The military did not provide a timeline.

That distinction matters. No criminal investigation has been announced in this case, and no finding that the journalists were deliberately targeted has been established. The sequence has prompted accusations that the second strike was a “double tap” attack on first responders, but that description and any legal conclusion remain unresolved.

What international law says

The International Committee of the Red Cross says journalists and other media professionals are protected as civilians under international humanitarian law unless, and for such time as, they directly participate in hostilities.

That protection applies to local, freelance and international journalists and does not depend on accreditation or affiliation with a major media organization. Reporting, photography and filming do not by themselves amount to direct participation in hostilities.

The ICRC says civilians must be protected against direct attack and that any attack on a military objective must comply with the rules of distinction, proportionality and precautions. Whether those rules were followed at Nasser Hospital is a matter for a completed investigation and, if warranted, further legal proceedings.

Why the unanswered questions matter

The case has implications beyond the families and news organizations involved. Local and freelance journalists remain central to documenting life and casualties in Gaza, where international media access has been restricted. Their work is essential to the public record, but the lack of independent access also makes claims about targets, evidence and military decision-making harder for outside organizations to verify.

An OHCHR Special Procedures record lists allegations involving killings, destruction of media facilities, harassment and detention affecting Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza and the West Bank. The record does not resolve the Nasser Hospital case, but it places the episode within a broader press-freedom and accountability concern.

The next meaningful developments would be publication of the military’s findings, a decision by the Military Advocate General’s Corps on whether to open a criminal investigation, or changes that allow independent international journalists to enter Gaza and examine the evidence directly.

Sources

• Associated Press anniversary investigation
• AP-Reuters joint accountability statement
• International Committee of the Red Cross journalist-protection guidance
• OHCHR Special Procedures record

The U.N. published the appeal on August 27. It raises the diplomatic urgency ahead of the next Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meetings, but it does not create a treaty, start negotiations or impose new international law. Governments will decide whether and how formal talks begin.

What changed on August 25

The appeal renews a call first issued by the U.N. secretary-general and the ICRC president in 2023. The new message says states should move beyond incremental and open-ended discussions and begin negotiations on a legally binding instrument with clear prohibitions and restrictions.

That is a stronger demand for a negotiating decision, not evidence that governments have already agreed on treaty language. U.N. officials said on August 25 that states had not yet begun negotiating such an instrument.

What the proposed rules would cover

The proposal is not a blanket ban on every autonomous weapon system. It combines prohibitions for the systems viewed as most dangerous with legally binding controls for other systems.

The two proposed prohibition categories are autonomous weapons whose effects are unpredictable and autonomous weapons designed or used to target human beings directly. The U.N. and ICRC say unpredictability makes it difficult for an operator to anticipate or limit the use of force. They also say delegating the selection of human targets to machines creates a particular danger to human dignity, civilian protection and accountability.

For systems that are not prohibited, the proposed controls could address the types of targets, the duration and geographic scope of operation, the scale of force, the situations in which a system may be used and the level of human supervision required.

The ICRC has also emphasized that people must retain effective control, including the ability to intervene or deactivate a system in time to prevent unlawful or unintended harm. Those are proposed standards, not rules that took effect on August 25.

Negotiations have not begun

U.N. officials said the U.N. and ICRC can provide political pressure and legal and humanitarian guidance, but governments are the decision-makers. If states agree to move forward, they would determine the framework, scope and timetable for negotiations.

The current CCW process is still working on elements of a possible instrument without prejudging whether the eventual result would be a protocol, treaty or another form of international measure. The expert group is expected to continue using rolling text, working papers and consensus discussions rather than presenting an already completed treaty.

AI is not the same as autonomy

The briefing also drew a line between artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. AI can be a component or operating modality in a weapon system, but AI alone does not define an autonomous weapon system. A system can have autonomous functions without using AI, and an AI-guided weapon is not automatically autonomous.

The central diplomatic question is how a weapon selects and engages targets, what decisions remain with a human operator and whether human judgment and intervention are timely and meaningful during operation.

U.N. officials also said there was no confirmed evidence that fully autonomous weapons had been used to target human beings. Unconfirmed reports and concern about the direction of weapons development remain part of the debate, but they should not be presented as verified findings about battlefield use.

Why humanitarian law is central

The dispute is not only about technology. It concerns whether existing international humanitarian-law rules can be applied reliably when weapons operate with limited human intervention in rapidly changing conditions.

A person may surrender, become wounded or move into a protected status. Civilians can enter an area of operation, and circumstances can change in ways that were not anticipated when a system was activated. Those conditions can complicate the legal duties to distinguish civilians from combatants, assess proportionality and take precautions against civilian harm.

They also raise a practical accountability question: who is responsible if a system makes an unlawful selection or engagement that no person could adequately predict or stop? The U.N. and ICRC are urging states to establish clearer limits before responsibility becomes harder to assign.

Two diplomatic milestones ahead

The immediate scheduled milestone is the second 2026 session of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems. It is scheduled for August 31 through September 4 in Geneva and is the final session under the group’s current 2026 mandate.

The group is tasked with further considering and formulating, by consensus, elements of a possible instrument and other measures, without prejudging the instrument’s legal nature. It can narrow disagreements, update working documents and clarify state positions, but it is not guaranteed to produce a treaty or authorize negotiations.

The larger decision point is the Seventh CCW Review Conference, scheduled for November 16 through 20 in Geneva. The U.N. and ICRC describe that conference as the clearest available path for states to decide whether to move toward formal negotiations. The dates are a diplomatic opportunity, not a guaranteed deadline for a final decision.

Why it matters

For the public, the issue is ultimately about civilian safety and responsibility for life-and-death decisions in war. Rules adopted before autonomous functions spread more widely could affect how militaries test, procure, deploy and review weapons, as well as how investigators assess unlawful harm.

The immediate change is diplomatic pressure: the U.N. and Red Cross are asking governments to turn years of technical discussions into a negotiating mandate. No new international law took effect on August 25, and no treaty currently governs autonomous weapons as a distinct category.

What to watch next

The most important signals will come from the documents and statements produced during the August 31-September 4 expert session. Watch for consensus language on human judgment and control, definitions of unpredictable systems and anti-personnel autonomy, and the scope of restrictions for other systems.

The next major question will be whether governments use the November review conference to authorize formal negotiations. On August 25, the U.N. and ICRC raised the urgency of that choice. They did not settle it.

Sources

• United Nations: renewed appeal on lethal autonomous weapons
• U.N. Geneva press briefing transcript, August 25, 2026
• U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs: 2026 LAWS expert group
• International Committee of the Red Cross position on autonomous weapons
• Associated Press report on the renewed appeal