Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in an Israeli drone attack while its Gaza bureau chief Wael Al Dahdouh has been seriously injured.
Wael Al Dahdouh has displayed courage and resilience after his wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in during October 2023. The family had reportedly moved to a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza following Israel’s warning on October 13.
Samer Abu Daqqa has been working as a cameraman and video editor with Al Jazeera in Gaza since 2004, said a message posted by Dima Khatib, Managing Director of AJ+ Channels.
He is the father of 3 kids. His family lives in Belgium. He refused to leave Gaza despite the danger, Dina Khatib said.
He would say: I won’t leave, one day my family will return to Gaza too, she noted.
Al Jazeera Media Network has condemned in strongest terms the Israeli drone attack on a Gaza school that resulted in the killing of cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.
Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over 5 hours, as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment, Al Jazeera reported.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it is deeply saddened by a drone strike that killed Al-Jazeera Arabic cameraperson Samer Abu Daqqa and injured reporter and Gaza bureau chief Wael Al Dahdouh, and calls on international authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the attack to hold the perpetrators to account.
On December 15, Al Dahdouh and Abu Daqqa were covering the aftermath of the nightly Israeli strikes on a UN school sheltering displaced people in the center of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, when they were wounded as a result of a missile launched from what is believed to be an Israeli drone, according to reports by their outlet and the Middle East Eye. Al-Jazeera urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate Abu Daqqa from the school to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
Al-Jazeera later announced that Abu Daqqa died, which was also reported by the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes.
Noura Erakat, a legal scholar, and human rights attorney shared a message on platform X saying that Israel has killed 90 journalists in 70 days.