That means the group was under attack for one minute and 45 seconds.

These findings are contained in the final report published Thursday (March 7) from the independent research institute, TNO, which carried out an analysis for Reuters at its laboratories in The Hague.

As well as killing Abdallah, six other journalists from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera were wounded in the incident.

A Reuters investigation in December covered TNO's initial report that the 120mm tank rounds were fired from 1.34km away inside Israel.

Now TNO says audio picked up by an Al Jazeera video camera at the scene shows the journalists also came under fire from 0.50 caliber rounds.

"We noticed that we could hear the bullets whizzing by. So that made us realise that the journalists were actually being fired upon with a machine gun. So, we analysed these bursts and we compared it to our own data, and based on frequency and this comparison we determined that this arms fire was consistent with a heavy machine gun, a 0.50 caliber machine gun."

TNO's Eric Kroon, led the investigation for Reuters.

His team said it was "likely" but not "concluded with certainty" that the tank and machine gun fire originated from the same position.

"Merkava tanks can be equipped with a heavy machine gun, a Browning machine gun, which is actually aligned with the tank gun."

Reuters could not independently determine if the Israeli tank crew knew it was firing on journalists, nor whether a machine gun was also fired and, if so, why.

The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked in December about TNO's initial findings, the IDF said: "We don't target journalists". It later added that the incident took place in an active combat zone.

This video was filmed on October 13, 2023 by Abdallah, moments before his death.

It shows the clearly identified group of journalists standing on a hilltop in an open border area near the Lebanese village of Alma al-Chaab.

TNO says there was a clear line of sight from where the Israeli rounds were fired to their location.

International humanitarian law bars attacks on journalists, who have the full scope of protection granted to civilians and cannot be considered military targets.

Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said:

"We condemn, in the strongest terms, the attack on a clearly identifiable group of journalists, working in the open. We reiterate our calls on Israel to explain how this could have happened and to hold those responsible to account."

AFP Global News Director Phil Chetwynd and Al Jazeera's manager of international communications Ihtisham Hibatullah both called on the Israeli government to disclose the findings of its own investigation into the incident.

Several of the experts interviewed by Reuters expressed divergent views about the attack.

Jessica Dorsey, is an expert in international humanitarian law at Utrecht University:

"The TNO report does conclude that it was likely, in addition to the two tank rounds, that machine gun fire came from the same location, and that adds to, or compounds the deliberateness with which they seem to have been targeted, directly. And I think that that, from a legal perspective, if this ever got to a courtroom, makes even more of a compelling argument that this was indeed a war crime."

Nick Kaufman, a British-born Israeli lawyer, has worked within the IDF's Military Advocate General Corps and at the International Criminal Court:

"Without a proper investigation of all the circumstances surrounding the operation and furthermore an understanding of the intelligence which underlay the deployment of the two tank rounds, I don't believe that it is possible to draw the conclusion that the IDF intended to target Reuters journalists or any journalist per se."

The day after the attack, Israel's military said it had visuals of the incident and it was being investigated.

No results have been made public.