For Wael al-Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, Sunday's worst nightmare came true. A few days after he lost his wife and two other children in Israeli bombings in the war against Hamas militants, Wael al-Dahdouh's other son, Hamza Wael Dahdouh, also a journalist with Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli attack. The Qatar-based media network claimed it was a “targeted killing.”
Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh (center) hugs his daughter during the funeral of his son Hamza Wael Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera television journalist who was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip January 7, 2024. (AFP) {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}}
Al Jazeera said two of its Palestinian journalists, including Hamza Wael Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, in the Gaza Strip were killed in the Israeli attack on their car. A third freelance journalist traveling with him, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.
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Wael al-Dahdouh himself was recently injured in a strike. Wael Dahdouh was injured in an Israeli attack in December that also killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. The Qatar-based broadcaster has lost three journalists since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.
A video posted on a YouTube channel affiliated with Al Jazeera showed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying next to his son's body and holding his hand. Later, after his son's funeral, he said in a televised address that journalists in Gaza would continue to do their work. “The whole world needs to see what’s happening here,” he said.
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Wael Al-Dahdouh is particularly well known to viewers across the Middle East after learning during a live broadcast last month that his wife, another son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday's killings were an “unimaginable tragedy” and that he “deeply regrets” the loss of the Al-Dahdouh family. “One (one journalist killed) is far too many,” Blinken said at a news conference in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
Another journalist who died while covering the conflict was Portal Visuals journalist Issam Abdallah. A Lebanese citizen, he was killed by an Israeli tank crew on October 13 while filming a cross-border shelling in Lebanon.
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip also confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli attack.
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Witnesses told AFP that two rockets were fired at the car – one hitting the front of the vehicle and the other hitting Hamza, who was sitting next to the driver.
“Later we found the body parts (of those that were in the car). Then the ambulance came and carried the people who were in the car,” a witness, who did not want to give his name for security reasons, told AFP.
The Israeli army told AFP it had “hit a terrorist who was operating an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF forces,” adding that it was “aware of reports that two other suspects were killed during the attack who were in the same vehicle as the Israeli army. “Terrorists were also hit.”
Al Jazeera said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the attacks by Israeli occupation forces on the car of Palestinian journalists” and accused Israel of “attacking” journalists and “violating the principles of press freedom.”
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The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas militants stormed across the Gaza Strip border into Israel in an unprecedented attack, killing around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to eradicate Hamas, denounced as a terrorist group by the US and EU, and has continued the relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip, killing 22,835 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. were killed.
(With contributions from AFP, Portal)
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