Al Jazeera Arabic cameraman Samer Abu Daqa was killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza on Friday, December 15. His bureau chief Wael Dahdouh was also injured at the arm.
An Al Jazeera journalist was killed on Friday and another injured in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, the Qatari channel reported.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the devastating news of the loss of our dedicated Al Jazeera cameraman, Samer Abu Daqa,” wrote Mohamed Moawad, an editor at the TV channel, on X (formerly Twitter).
Al Jazeera had previously reported that its Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, and Abu Daqa had been injured in a school in Khan Yunis (south) “following what is believed to be an Israeli drone attack.”
According to Al Jazeera, Samer Abu Daqa was seriously injured but remained for hours at the scene of the strike, which emergency services were unable to reach because the road was blocked by the rubble of a house.
Wael Dahdouh was wounded in the arm and transferred to the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, an AFP journalist observed.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli army had no immediate comment.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said it held “the Israeli occupation forces fully responsible for the safety of Samer.”
More Than 60 Journalists Killed
“The Gaza team, in particular Wael and Samer, have played a crucial role in revealing the scale of the destruction and horrors of Israeli atrocities. Without their dedication and commitment, the horrors of Gaza would not be exposed to the world,” said the channel.
An initial bombardment targeted a school belonging to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Khan Yunis, which the journalists had come to cover, when a second bombardment took place, according to a statement from the Hamas movement in power in Gaza.
This second strike “deliberately targeted journalists,” Hamas claims.
This was an “attempt to intimidate journalists so that they do not document the (Israeli) massacres committed in the Gaza Strip,” they continued.
Wael Dahdouh’s wife and two of his children were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza on October 25.
More than 60 journalists and media employees have been killed since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7, triggered by Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In East Jerusalem, an area occupied and annexed by Israel, a Palestinian journalist from Turkish news agency Anadolu was injured during police violence on the sidelines of Friday prayers near the al-Aqsa mosque.
Malo Pinatel, with AFP
