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Visual artist Amna Al‑Salmi (36) and photographer/filmmaker Ismail Abu Hatab (32) were among around 30 people killed when Israeli forces bombed the seaside al‑Baqa café in Gaza City on 30 June 2025, an attack that devastated one of the enclave’s key social and cultural hubs. The strike formed part of a broader wave of Israeli assaults that day which killed dozens more Palestinians, amid a war that has already displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population and heavily targeted its civilian and cultural infrastructure.

The al‑Baqa café strike
Al‑Baqa café, a family‑run venue built partly on stilts over the sea, was hit in the afternoon during a busy period when it was crowded with young people, women and children seeking rare respite from months of bombardment and siege. Reports from Gaza’s civil defence and international media put the death toll from the café strike at roughly two to four dozen people, with many more injured, and note that some bodies were blown into the sea, complicating exact counts.npr+4

Before its destruction, al‑Baqa had become known as a safe social space and informal co‑working hub, offering internet and electricity to residents facing chronic outages, and drawing artists, journalists, activists, students and the few foreigners able to enter Gaza under blockade. The café had already been damaged and repaired several times earlier in the war, symbolising both the vulnerability and the resilience of Gaza’s youth culture on the city’s seafront.

Al‑Baqa as cultural space
For Gaza’s artistic community, al‑Baqa functioned as a meeting point where creative workers, media professionals and civil society actors could exchange ideas, collaborate on projects and briefly escape the intensity of frontline reporting and humanitarian work. Journalists’ and activists’ testimonies describe it as one of the few remaining places where young Gazans could experience something like normal urban life—coffee, sea air, conversation—amid systematic destruction of cultural venues, universities and studios.

This role made the strike not only a lethal attack on civilians but also a blow to Gaza’s fragile cultural ecosystem, which relies on such mixed social spaces in the absence of well‑resourced formal institutions. Human rights and arts advocacy groups have framed the killing of those gathered at al‑Baqa, including artists and a journalist, as part of a wider pattern of violence against Palestinian culture, memory and documentation of the war.

Amna Al‑Salmi’s artistic practice
Amna Al‑Salmi, known artistically as “Frans,” was a prominent figure in Gaza’s contemporary art scene, trained in fine arts photography at Al‑Aqsa University and active across painting, mural work, sculpture and digital art. Colleagues and family describe a practice deeply rooted in community work: she collaborated with organisations such as the Tamer Institute for Community Education and local initiatives like “Reviving Gaza,” leading workshops that used art to help children and youth cope with trauma and displacement.

Despite repeated displacements, family loss, and her brother’s severe war injury, Al‑Salmi continued producing work and running activities throughout the conflict, reportedly hoping to pursue further studies abroad while remaining committed to Gaza’s cultural life. Friends and fellow artists have portrayed her death as the loss of a rare emerging voice whose art intertwined care work, political witnessing and a determination to affirm beauty amid destruction.

Ismail Abu Hatab’s visual documentation
Ismail Abu Hatab was a Palestinian photojournalist and filmmaker from Gaza City, founder of the production outfit C‑light (often stylised Clight TV) and the ByPa / By Palestine creative platform, and was widely recognised for his frontline coverage of the Gaza war. He worked with local and international media and organised photography exhibitions in and beyond Gaza that focused on daily life under siege, community resilience and the human impact of repeated military offensives.

Abu Hatab had been seriously wounded in a previous Israeli airstrike in November 2023 that targeted his office, leaving him with long‑term mobility challenges, yet he continued documenting the war’s aftermath and producing films and photo essays. Shortly before his killing, his work appeared in international projects such as the Chicago exhibition “HOME | الب” and the online initiative “Gaza: Against Erasure,” underscoring his role in connecting Gaza’s stories to global audiences.

Broader significance for artistic freedom
The deaths of Al‑Salmi and Abu Hatab at al‑Baqa café exemplify the extreme risks faced by artists, journalists and cultural workers in Gaza, where bombardment, blockade and displacement have devastated cultural infrastructure and repeatedly targeted spaces of assembly. Organisations dedicated to artists’ rights have condemned the strike as part of a wider campaign of erasure against Palestinian cultural life, calling for independent investigations into attacks on civilians and specific protection for those documenting and expressing experiences of the war.

Beyond the immediate tragedy, the killing of two leading young practitioners removes vital channels through which Gazans have narrated their own reality—through painting, murals, photography and film—to local communities and the outside world. For networks focused on artistic freedom and human rights, this incident is therefore both a grave loss of individual lives and a stark illustration of how contemporary conflict can annihilate cultural memory at its source.

The loss of visual artist Amna Al-Salmi and filmmaker/photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab in the bombing of Gaza’s al-Baqa café is a profound blow to Palestinian cultural life. Beyond the tragic loss of life, this attack erased a vital space where creativity, journalism, and community survived amid siege. Their work carried Gaza’s stories to the world, and their absence leaves a silence that must not be ignored.

#ArtUnderAttack #ProtectJournalists #Gaza #CulturalRights #FreedomOfExpression #PalestinianArtists #HumanRights #Photojournalism #CreativeCommunities

Artists Killed in Gaza Café

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