Family members and Hamas have rejected claims by the Israeli army that two Al Jazeera journalists it killed in a Gaza air strike were “terror operatives”, AFP reports.

Hamza Wael Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, who also worked as a video stringer for AFP and other news organisations, were killed on Sunday while they were on an assignment for the Qatar-based channel in the city of Rafah.

Hamza’s father Wael al-Dahdouh, who is Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, rejected the claims.

“These are fabrications. It is clear that they (army) are attempting to defend themselves, justify what is happening and derail the issue,” Dahdouh told AFP.

Hamas’s press office also rejected the army’s claims against the two journalists, saying Israel “creates false pretexts to justify its massacres and crimes against Palestinian civilians and journalists”.