When Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud saw an airstrike lighting up the sky above Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, he knew immediately that his colleagues were dead.

In a targeted strike on Sunday, Israeli forces killed five Al Jazeera journalists who had been operating out of a tent in front of the beleaguered hospital. 

Israel says the strike successfully targeted Hamas militants, but press freedom advocates say it was meant to silence journalists on the front lines of the bloody conflict in Gaza. 

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, 28, was killed alongside correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. Mohammad Al-Khaldi, a local freelance reporter, was also killed in the airstrike, medics at Al Shifa Hospital said.

Israel accused al-Sharif of heading up a Hamas cell that was "responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians," citing intelligence and documents found in Gaza as evidence.

Al Jazeera, the Committee to Protect Journalists and United Nations Special Rapporteur Irene Khan have all said Israel's allegations about al-Sharif are unsubstantiated. 

Mahmoud says Israel has been amping up its rhetoric against Al Jazeera in recent months, painting the Qatar-based media outlet's Palestinian journalists as terrorists, with a particular focus on al-Sharif.

Mahmoud visited al-Sharif and his other colleagues in the tent a few hours before they were killed. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens guest host Aarti Pole.

What did you see and hear of this strike that killed your colleagues?

I was actually a block away from the bomb site, where the tent is located.

As you know, many of us are working from the street. We set up these makeshift tents because all the buildings that we've once occupied and had our offices [in] have been destroyed.

So our colleagues from Al Jazeera Arabic had their tents right in front of the main gate of Al Shifa Hospital, the road leading to the emergency department. That's why they had always the opportunity to capture all these images coming from Al Shifa hospital of scores of injuries being transferred to the hospital.

Just a couple hours before it happened, I was just right at that place. I finished up a report on health facilities and the dire situations inside these health facilities, and I stopped by the tent.

We chatted. We giggled a bit. We even talked about when all of this is going to end, we should take a long break. And we insisted on long, because it's been 22 months of relentless coverage, and both Anas and Mohammed, the two correspondents from Al Jazeera Arabic, agreed that, yes, there needs to be a break after all of this.

I left the tent [and] went back to our vehicle on a good note that, God's willing, it will end soon. Hopefully, we will hear a resumption of ceasefire talks rather than the ongoing concerning news of reoccupying the whole Gaza Strip. We wished each other the best of luck and to be safe and protected. But luck was not on their side this time.

So then how did you hear news that there had been this airstrike and that your friend had been killed?

The attack was very massive. I could see it lighting up the sky above Al Shifa, and I [had] seen the smoke and I knew it's got to be the only place that the Israeli military marked as a target, particularly … after a week intensifying the smear campaign, the incitement campaign against Al Jazeera, against the crew members on the ground, the correspondence, the work that we are doing.

They all joined together in a very sinister smear campaign and inciting campaign calling him names, calling him a terrorist or calling him as an affiliate of Hamas and its military wing, but without offering any substantial evidence whatsoever. 

For every journalist that was killed, the Israeli military put the same exact statement that they are Hamas members, but failed to provide any concrete evidence whatsoever.

I'm hoping that you might also be able to describe for our listeners what Anas was like when the cameras were off. I know he had a wife and he leaves behind two young children, too.

He had family to take care of, a family that [has] been on constant movement, being displaced more than one time from one place to another. When he was off camera, pretty much he did the same exact thing that we did — searching for food, searching for water, making sure the shelter is safe for his wife, for his mother, for his two little ones.

He was also very, very loved by everyone because he talked about people. He reported about their stories. He reported about their suffering and the challenges that they faced every day of their life for the past 22 months. 

It was not a surprise to see a large crowd turning up for his funeral at the Shifa hospital. It filled up the yard of the hospital and mostly from people who knew him, people who supported them, and assisted them throughout this hardship. 

We know that Anas was one of a few journalists who were killed in this particular strike. How do you carry on knowing that risk is so near?

I've always been saying that we are steps away from death, and it feels more imminent right now because this is a systematic campaign of getting rid of all the voices that amplify the voices of Palestinians and that it's suppressing the voices of the criticism, the voices that report on the unfolding horror of this genocide. 

What we report on is only the tip of the iceberg of what we see and document every single day. There are scenes that we cannot get on the screen because they are so graphic. So it's only five to 10 per cent of what we experience on a daily basis that gets on the screen of Al Jazeera. Not everything, because it would be outrageous to show some of the graphic scenes and footage that we shoot on a daily basis or the reports that we are doing. 

I don't feel safe. And the same thing applies to the two million Palestinians across the Gaza Strip. Because Gaza is unprotected ... under the grind of this brutal war machine. 

There is no guarantee that this interview is going to finish and nothing is going to happen to me. There's no guarantee that in the middle of this interview something isn't going to happen.

We just live minute-by-minute now.