“It was as if a storm had targeted us.” On the afternoon of December 15, an Israeli airstrike hit the Farhana School in Khan Younis, where Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh and his cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa had just filmed the aftermath of an earlier bombardment in the area.
Dahdouh was thrown to the ground. “I lost my balance until I fainted slightly until I regained my strength,” he told The Intercept. “I tried to get up somehow because I was sure that another missile would be aimed at us – in our experience, that's what usually happens.” Dahdouh realized that he was bleeding heavily from his arm and that if he didn't get one, he would die would get medical help. He also temporarily lost much of his hearing due to the explosion. He looked over and saw that the three civil defense workers who had accompanied the two journalists had been killed.
“In those milliseconds I thought I couldn’t offer him anything. I could not. And he couldn’t move, he couldn’t stand up.”
Then he saw Abu Daqqa lying on the ground some distance away. “He tried to get up and it seemed like he was screaming,” Dahdouh said. “In those milliseconds I thought I couldn’t offer him anything. I could not. And he couldn't move, he couldn't get up. I decided to use the remaining glimmer of hope and try to go to the ambulance.”
Dahdouh somehow managed to make his way across the rubble to an ambulance hundreds of meters away and was evacuated to a nearby hospital. But Abu Daqqa, who was injured in his lower body, could not walk to the ambulance and remained lying on the ground. Hours passed, but rescue workers were unable to reach him without permission from the Israeli military. When his life escaped him, Al Jazeera Posted A live counter on his broadcast shows the number of hours and minutes since Abu Daqqa was wounded. When emergency services finally reached Abu Daqqa more than five hours later, he was dead.
A still image from a video published by Al Jazeera showing Samer Abu Daqqa speaking to a colleague while working in Gaza in early December, before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike on December 15, 2023.
Screenshot: Al Jazeera
Over the course of those five hours, humanitarian organizations and fellow journalists repeatedly urged the Israeli military to facilitate the evacuation of Abu Daqqa, according to people involved in the effort and chat logs from several journalists obtained by The Intercept. The detailed timeline of the hours before Abu Daqqa's death shows that Israel Defense Forces did not allow emergency responders safe passage for hours, despite knowing that a journalist was in urgent need of help.
In all, Abu Daqqa lay wounded and bleeding just two kilometers from the nearest hospital, but no one could reach him for well over five hours as his colleagues and much of the world watched. The Israeli military was well aware that an Al Jazeera journalist was lying helpless, according to reporting by The Intercept. Still, it did not allow emergency teams to pass safely for nearly four hours and did not send a bulldozer for more than an hour after that. (The Israeli military did not respond to questions from The Intercept.)
Much evidence points to a targeted Israeli attack on Al Jazeera journalists. “There was no one in this area but us. Therefore, there was no margin for error for the Israeli army, considering that there were large and small drones in the sky in the area,” Dahdouh said. “They knew everything we were doing all along and when we returned we were targeted – there’s no doubt about that.”
Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua via Getty Images
Dahdouh, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, and Abu Daqqa, a veteran cameraman for the channel, arrived at Farhana School around noon that day to cover the aftermath of an Israeli bombardment in the area, Dahdouh told The Intercept. Wearing helmets and body armor marked “Press,” they headed to the school in an ambulance with a team of uniformed Palestinian Civil Defense Forces – a government department responsible for emergency services and rescue – who coordinated with and according to Dahdouh He received permission from the Israeli military through the Red Cross to stay in the area.
Repeated Israeli air strikes left many roads impassable and debris blocking the roads. Dahdouh said that on the way to the school, the ambulance had to stop at least three or four times over a distance of just 600 to 800 meters so that the crew could clear debris so that it could pass. Eventually, Al Jazeera journalists and Civil Defense staff walked the final distance to the school, while the ambulance drivers agreed to wait for the team further up the road.
Dahdouh and Abu Daqqa filmed for around two and a half hours in and around the school, all the while the buzz of Israeli drones filled the sky. At around 2:30 p.m. they were making their way back to the ambulance when they were hit by an Israeli airstrike.
Applying pressure to his wounds, Dahdouh stumbled a distance of about 800 to 1,000 meters to the ambulance. When he reached the ambulance, he immediately called on rescue workers to save Abu Daqqa. They insisted on evacuating Dahdouh to a hospital first and said they would send another ambulance to rescue Abu Daqqa. Videos of Dahdouh at Nasser Hospital show him wincing in pain as his wounds are treated and demanding that Abu Daqqa be rescued. “Coordinate with that [Red] Cross,” he says repeatedly. “Let someone get him.”
Al Jazeera's Ramallah bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, did just that. Omari told The Intercept that he first contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross at 3:35 p.m. and asked them to speak with the Israeli military to make contact to facilitate a rescue operation for Abu Daqqa. Omari said he was in close contact with the ICRC at home and abroad and that they had made “great efforts” to coordinate with Israeli authorities.
Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images
Dahdouh said he later learned from colleagues that at the start of the ordeal, as ambulances initially approached the area to reach Abu Daqqa, Israeli forces fired near them, forcing them to return and wait for permission from the Israeli military to invade. He also said Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews had requested that they be accompanied by a Red Cross vehicle so that they would not become targets of the Israeli military.
Meanwhile, news of the catastrophic condition of Abu Daqqa spread.
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Orly Halpern, a freelance reporter and producer based in Jerusalem, learned what happened when an acquaintance sent her a link to a story at 3:08 p.m. Halpern decided to post about it in a WhatsApp group of over 140 journalists from the Foreign Press Association, or FPA, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization that represents reporters from over 30 countries. According to screenshots of the WhatsApp group obtained by The Intercept, at 4:27 p.m. Halpern described the incident and wrote: “Samer Abu Daqqa is seriously injured and still trapped in the school. The ambulance waits for Israeli forces to evacuate it. But that hasn't happened yet… Walid al-Umari, the head of the AJ office, said that the ICRC is trying to contact the IDF. But still no progress. It's been two hours since they were hit. Maybe we can all call the IDF spox and demand that he be allowed to evacuate.”
Three minutes later, she continued in another post: “The important thing is to save the cameraman. And the Israelis must allow the ambulance to reach him.” Halpern tagged Ellen Krosney, the FPA's executive secretary, and added, “Could the FPA also contact the IDF?” At 4:57 p.m., Krosney replied, “I'm mixing “Include me.”
Meanwhile, other journalists in the group worked to confirm Abu Daqqa's location and one published a photo of a map showing the location of two schools in Khan Younis – Haifa and Farhana – while another journalist confirmed that Abu Daqqa stayed in Farhana.
Halpern then released at 5:17 p.m. the contact information of three Israeli officials, including the press office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, an agency of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, as well as the contact information of three senior Israeli military spokesmen.
Halpern explained her reasons for sharing the contacts to The Intercept: “I believe there is power in numbers. This is even more true when these figures are journalists. I don't think my vote alone would have persuaded the Army to take action, especially if the Red Cross had not been successful. But I thought if many journalists contacted the army along with the Foreign Press Association, then the army might be more compelled to act, especially knowing that we were aware of the situation and would report it.”
At 5:27 p.m., a full three hours after Abu Daqqa was wounded in the airstrike, Krosney wrote that Israeli authorities had still not given emergency teams permission to reach him: “Ambulances are still not cleared, but I am standing in contact with the IDF. who knows about it. And they know that FPA members are deeply upset.”
Halpern further urged journalists in the group to individually message Daniel Hagari or Richard Hecht – both Israeli military spokesmen whose contact information she had just shared – to pressure them to facilitate a rescue operation. “If everyone who cares about their fellow journalists writes a message to Hagari or Hecht and tells him that we as journalists are following this case, then there is a much greater chance that the problem will be solved before Samer dies, if that happens is possible,” wrote Halpern.
“The important thing is to save the cameraman. And the Israelis must allow the ambulance to reach him.”
In parallel, more targeted efforts by a smaller group of more senior FPA members resulted in responses from the army but no real action. At 5:31 p.m., a journalist from the smaller group had sent a message to an army official, telling him that the IDF was aware of the situation and was handling the situation. Two minutes later, he received a new message back saying that the military's Southern Command, which oversees the Gaza Strip, had been informed but that there were problems with the “passage” from the school to the hospital. This happened despite the fact that it was the Israeli military that had reduced many streets to rubble in previous airstrikes and maintains near-constant drone surveillance of the Gaza Strip.
The smaller group received another message at 6:22 p.m. that the military was still working on it. At 6:27 p.m., four hours after Abu Daqqa was wounded, Halpern received word from her producer in Gaza that ambulances still could not reach the school. Meanwhile, Omari, who was added to the WhatsApp group shortly after the discussion began, wrote: “The road is closed. A destroyed building is blocking the road, they need a bulldozer to open it. They can't get to the school.” Halpern then told the group that they would have to ask the Israeli military to send a bulldozer to clear the way. At 7:02 p.m., Tania Kraemer, a Jerusalem-based correspondent for Deutsche Welle and chair of the FPA, responded: “In contact with the IDF Orly. There is no news yet on the above.” At 7:23 a.m. – now after five hours of bleeding – the smaller group was told that the IDF would send a bulldozer within 10 minutes and that it would take 20 minutes to reach the site to reach.
Meanwhile, at 7:25 p.m., Halpern posted an update in the larger group chat that the Israeli military had authorized the passage of a Palestinian bulldozer.
It was too late. Palestinian forces finally managed to reach the school after a Palestinian-operated bulldozer cleared the way for an ambulance and found Abu Daqqa dead. At 7:55 p.m., Halpern posted a message in the group chat she received from her producer in Gaza that he had been killed.
Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Al Jazeera reported that Abu Daqqa faced sustained fire as he attempted to crawl to safety. Dahdouh and Halpern said they received reports that Abu Daqqa was found without his protective vest several meters from where he was wounded.
The FPA released a statement shortly afterwards saying it was “concerned about the [Israeli] Silence of the military and [called] for an immediate investigation and explanation as to why it appears to have attacked the area and why Samer could not be evacuated in time to receive treatment and possibly rescue.”
The next day, Al Jazeera announced that it was preparing a legal filing for submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the so-called “assassination” of Abu Daqqa by Israeli forces in Gaza. The order would also include “recurrent attacks on the network’s crews working and operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.” In a statement, the network said: “Samer's injury left him bleeding to death for over five hours as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him and denied urgently needed emergency treatment.”
Gaza is currently the deadliest place for journalists on record.
Reporters Without Borders also implicated Abu Daqqa in a war crimes lawsuit the group filed with the International Criminal Court over the deaths of seven Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza between October 22 and December 15.
Gaza is currently the deadliest place for journalists on record. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate documented the murder of over 100 journalists in just three months. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of Israel's war on Gaza – almost all of them Palestinians – than were ever killed in a single country in an entire year. Many of the journalists still living in Gaza have lost several family members and their homes.
Photo: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Dahdouh himself has become a symbol of both the suffering and resilience of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. In October, his wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp, where they had sought refuge after their home was bombed. On Sunday, his eldest son Hamza, also a journalist, was killed along with another journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, in an airstrike on their car in the western part of Khan Younis.
“Holding the murderer to account is the least that can be done to ensure that he does not escape punishment every time, resulting in Palestinian journalists continuing to be targeted and attacked without being held accountable and without trial.” said Dahdouh. “The attacks and destruction of offices, such as the offices of Al Jazeera; the attacks on Palestinian families, as is the case with my family; and targeting houses, like my house, which was destroyed and there are no houses near it at all, so they know they have the Al Jazeera boss's house in their sights. It is clear that this is all happening in the context of the Israeli military's pressure and punishment of Palestinian journalists. But as I always say, despite all the hurt and pain, we will continue to spread this message and fulfill our duty to pass on information, images and news to our viewers so that they can be the first to know about everything that is happening in the Gaza Strip.”
Ryan Grim and Natasha Lennard contributed reporting.