For Wael al-Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, his worst nightmare got here true on Sunday. Days after shedding his spouse and two different kids in Israeli bombardment within the battle in opposition to Hamas militants, Wael al-Dahdouh’s one other son Hamza Wael Dahdouh, additionally a journalist with Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli strike. The Qatar-based media community claimed it was a “focused killing”.
Al Jazeera mentioned two of its Palestinian journalists, together with Hamza Wael Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, within the Gaza Strip had been killed within the Israeli strike on their automobile. A 3rd freelance journalist touring with them, Hazem Rajab, was significantly injured.
Wael al-Dahdouh was himself not too long ago wounded in a strike not too long ago. Wael Dahdouh was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that additionally killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. The Qatar-based channel has misplaced three journalists for the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas battle on October 7.
A video posted on an Al Jazeera-linked YouTube channel confirmed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying subsequent to his son’s physique and holding his hand. Later, after his son’s burial, he mentioned in televised remarks that journalists in Gaza would preserve doing their job. “All the world must see what is going on right here,” he mentioned.
Wael Al-Dahdouh is especially well-known to viewers throughout the Middle East after he discovered throughout a dwell broadcast final month that his spouse, one other son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air strike.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned Sunday’s killings had been an “unimaginable tragedy” and that he was “deeply deeply sorry” for the Al-Dahdouh household’s loss. “One (journalist killed) is much too many” Blinken mentioned at a press convention in Doha, the Qatari capital.
Another journalist who died protecting the battle was Reuters visible journalist Issam Abdallah. A Lebanese citizen, he was killed on October 13 by an Israeli tank crew whereas filming cross-border shelling in Lebanon.
The well being ministry in Hamas-run Gaza additionally confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli strike.
Witnesses instructed information company AFP that two rockets had been fired on the automobile – one hit the entrance of the automobile and the opposite hit Hamza who was sitting subsequent to the motive force.
“We later discovered the physique elements (of these within the automobile). The ambulance then got here and carried those that had been within the automobile,” a witness, who declined to present his title for safety causes, instructed AFP.
The Israeli military instructed AFP that it had “struck a terrorist who operated an plane that posed a menace to IDF troops”, including that it was “conscious of the reviews that through the strike, two different suspects who had been in the identical automobile because the terrorists had been additionally hit”.
Al Jazeera mentioned in an announcement it “strongly condemns the Israeli occupation forces’ focusing on of the Palestinian journalists’ automobile”, accusing Israel of “focusing on” journalists and “violating the rules of freedom of the press”.
The battle in Gaza broke out after Hamas militants stormed throughout Gaza’s border into Israel in an unprecedented assault which left some 1,140 folks useless, largely civilians, in keeping with an AFP tally based mostly 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 saved up a relentless bombing of Gaza, which the Hamas-run well being ministry says has killed 22,835 folks, largely civilians.