Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 2 journalists killed in Israeli strike
Crowds examine the car in which two journalists, Mustafa Thuria, a video stringer for AFP news agency, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, a journalist with Al Jazeera television network, were killed in an air strike on Rafah blamed by Hamas on Israel
Amman – The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said on Sunday that an Israeli air strike killed two journalists in the Palestinian territory.
Mustafa Thuria, a video stringer for AFP news agency, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, a journalist with the Al Jazeera television network, were killed while they were travelling 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 al-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.
“Hamza was everything for me … while we are full of humanity they (Israel) are full of murder and hatred,” Dahdouh said on Al Jazeera television.
“I hope that the blood of my son Hamza is the last blood to flow of journalists as well as people in the Gaza Strip.”
Dahdouh was seen in tears as he hugged his son’s body at a hospital surrounded by other journalists and relatives.
Thuria, in his 30s, had worked with Agence France-Presse 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 been 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 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
The Hamas government media office said in a statement that “we condemn this heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation army in a bid to intimidate and prevent media coverage”.
“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.