Jan. 7 (UPI) — Israel conducted an airstrike Friday on a car that was carrying an Al-Jazeera journalist and a freelance journalist who contributed to France’s AFP newswire.
The two journalists were identified as Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya and a third passenger in the car, identified as Hazem Rajab, was also killed, Al-Jazeera reported.
Hamza Dahdouh was the son of Wael Dahdouh, the news organization’s bureau chief in Gaza. Wael Dahdouh was injured in a strike in December.
The younger Dahdouh and his colleague Thuraya were on their way to interview civilians who have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombing of residential houses in Gaza.
“Hamza was everything to me, the eldest boy, he was the soul of my soul,” Wael Dahdouh said as his son was buried on Saturday. “These are the tears of parting and loss, the tears of humanity.”
Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera strongly condemned the attack in a statement that said the slaying of the journalists “reaffirms the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists has previously blasted Israel’s war on Palestine for its “record toll” on journalists.
“The Israeli army has killed more journalists in 10 weeks than any other army or entity has in any single year. And with every journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and to understand,” said CPJ’s Sherif Mansour.
At least 68 journalists had been killed since the latest iteration of the war began as of mid-December. But journalists have been killed by Israel throughout the decades-long conflict between Palestine and Israel. In 2022, the Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was shot by an Israeli soldier raiding a refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestine.
“Journalists are civilians and must be treated as such under international humanitarian law,” said Mansour in December.
“It’s imperative we see independent, transparent investigations into the latest pattern of killings. In addition, the Israeli army must end its muzzling of international media by allowing them to report from Gaza, stop its harassment of journalists in the West Bank, and allow the free flow of information and humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
