An Israeli airstrike against a car near Rafah, in southern Gaza, killed two Palestinian journalists who were in the area carrying out news coverage this Sunday, according to Palestinian health sources and the journalists’ union in the area. .
Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya were freelance journalists. Al-Dahdouh had collaborated with Al Jazeera and was the son of Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Qatari television network’s chief correspondent in Gaza. A third journalist, Hazem Rajab, was injured.
The Gazan government, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, condemned their deaths and denounced “the failed attempt” by Israel to “obscure the truth” with attacks on journalists.
“We ask press and media unions, legal and human rights entities to condemn this crime and denounce its repetition by the (Israeli) occupation,” he stressed in a statement. For its part, Hamas accused Israel of deliberately murdering the two journalists who were traveling together, in a “war crime” in order to “terrorize” journalists into stopping reporting in Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces have not made any statement about the attack.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which broke out on October 7, has been deadly for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international watchdog, stated that as of Saturday, 77 journalists and media workers had died: 70 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
According to the media office of the Hamas government in Gaza, the two new deaths bring to 109 the number of journalists killed by the Israeli offensive.
A video posted on a YouTube channel linked to Al Jazeera showed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying next to his son’s body and holding his hand. Later, after the burial of his son, he stated in televised statements that Gaza journalists would continue to do his job.
“It is our destiny and we must accept it,” he declared, but “the whole world must look at what is happening in Gaza,” he declared. “Everyone needs to see what’s happening here.”
Wael Al-Dahdouh is especially known to Middle Eastern viewers after he learned during a live broadcast last month that his wife, another son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
And in the West Bank, a Palestinian girl was killed this Sunday by shots fired by the Israeli Border Police at a military crossing in the Jerusalem area, after the agents shot at a vehicle belonging to a Palestinian driver who tried to carry out an alleged intentional hit-and-run attack, the police reported. Police and local media.
The four-year-old girl, who was declared dead after Israeli emergency crews tried to revive her, was not in the car of the alleged perpetrator of the attack, “but in another vehicle that was at the crossing,” the Israeli Border Police said in a statement. a statement.
“Recently, a vehicle in which a man and a woman were traveling arrived at the Ras Bidu intersection (in the occupied East Jerusalem area) and carried out an attack by running over members of the Police,” after which they shot “and they neutralized the terrorist,” added the same source.
“As part of the shooting against the terrorists, a girl who was in another car that was at the intersection was injured,” but she had no involvement in the accident, the Police added.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa identified the dead girl as Ruqaya Jahalin. On the other hand, he specified that the alleged perpetrator of the attack, a young Palestinian, was also killed by Israeli forces. In turn, an Israeli Police officer in her twenties suffered minor injuries to her extremities and was evacuated to the hospital.
