The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike killed two journalists in the Palestinian territory.
Mostafa Thuraya, a video stringer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, a journalist with the Al Jazeera television network, were killed while they were traveling in a car, the ministry and medics said.
AFP has asked the Israeli army for comment. The military replied by requesting the geographic “coordinates” of the strike.
Hamza’s father Wael Dahdouh is Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief who was recently wounded in a strike after his wife and two other children were killed in Israeli bombardment in the initial weeks of the war. Dahdouh was seen in tears as he hugged his son’s body at a hospital surrounded by other journalists and relatives.
Israeli Airstrike Kills Journalists Gaza
By December 31, at least 77 journalists and media workers had been killed since the October 7 start of the war between #Israel and Hamas, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect #Journalists. pic.twitter.com/SVSxlx0MY9
— This is Beirut (@ThisIsBeirut_) January 7, 2024
Thuraya, who was in his 30s, had been working with AFP since 2019 and had also worked with other media networks, including AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera and CNN, according to his AFP colleagues.
The two men had gone to film a strike on a house in Rafah earlier Sunday, and their car was hit while they were on their way back.
By December 31, at least 77 journalists and media workers had been killed since the October 7 start of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Of those killed, 70 were Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese.
“We are all shocked” by the news of the journalists’ deaths, said Christophe Deloire, the Secretary General of the media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on X, formerly Twitter.
