Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year, ordering them closed.

The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.

Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.

Al-Sharif’s death comes weeks after a UN expert and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel had targeted him with a smear campaign.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, on 31 July said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”