Fatima Hassouna

Fatima Hassouna ( ; ; 1999 – 16 April 2025), sometimes spelled Fatma Hassona, was a Palestinian photojournalist whose work documented civilian life during the Gaza war. She gained international recognition for her visceral documentation of war impacts and became the subject of the documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, selected for the ACID film programme shown in parallel with the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. She was killed alongside ten family members in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home on 16 April 2025.

Biography Hassouna was born in Gaza City in 1999 and graduated with a multimedia degree from the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza. She began documenting life in Gaza after the October 7 attacks.

As one of few local journalists able to document the war after Israel banned foreign reporters from Gaza, Hassouna chronicled forced civilian evacuations under Israeli military orders; On 15 April 2025, she posted her final Instagram story showing a Gaza sunset with the caption: "It's the first sunset in a long time". In their final exchange, Hassouna told Farsi: "I'll come to Cannes, but I have to return to Gaza. I don't want to leave".

Death Hassouna and ten relatives including her pregnant sister were killed when an Israeli missile struck their family home in Gaza City's Tuffah neighborhood on 16 April 2025. She had previously written on social media "If I die, I want a loud death". Hassouna was one of at least 175 journalists killed in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel by April 2025 according to press freedom groups. The Israel Defense Forces stated they targeted "a Hamas member involved in attacks against Israeli soldiers", claiming use of precision weapons.

Legacy In April 2025, a few days after Fatima Hassouna was killed, literary magazine ArabLit published Batool Abu Akleen's translation of Fatima Hassouna's collection of poems A Resonant Death. Palestinian photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf told Die Zeit that Fatima Hassouna was an example of a photographer who had been "deliberately targeted" by Israel, regardless of whether she had actually worked with Hamas.