Al Jazeera journalist loses fifth family member in Israeli strike

GAZA: An Israeli air strike on a car near Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday killed two journalists among the eldest son of Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, who were out reporting, the territory’s health ministry said.

Mustafa Thuria and Hamza Al-Dahdouh, a journalist with the Al Jazeera television network, were killed while they were “on their way to carry out their duty” for the channel in the Gaza Strip, the network said.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, is particularly well known to viewers after he learned during a live broadcast in October that his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son had been killed in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Witnesses told AFP that two rockets were fired at the car — one hit the front of the vehicle and the other hit Hamza who was in sitting next to the driver.

“We later found the body parts (of those in the car). The ambulance then came and carried those who were in the car,” a witness told AFP.

A video posted on an Al Jazeera-linked YouTube channel showed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying next to his son’s body and holding his hand. Later, after his son’s burial, he said in televised remarks that journalists in Gaza would keep doing their job.

Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh is mourning his son, Hamza Dahdouh, who has been killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted his car in southern Gaza.

In October, Israeli forces killed Wael’s wife, other son, daughter and grandson ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/5Y4WM2whsw

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 7, 2024

“All the world needs to see what is happening here,” he said.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killing of the two journalists and said it had been a deliberate attack.

“We urge the International Criminal Court, the governments and human rights organisations, and the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes and demand an end to the targeting and killing of journalists,” the network said in a statement.

According to the Gaza government’s media office, the two new deaths raised its own tally of journalists killed by the Israeli offensive to 109.

The war erupted when Palestinian group Hamas stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel in an unprecedented attack which left some 1,140 people dead, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas and has kept up a relentless bombing of Gaza, which the health ministry says has killed 22,835 people, mostly civilians.