Cairo: A Palestinian cameraman working for Al Jazeera was killed and the network’s chief correspondent in Gaza was wounded in an Israeli drone strike on a school in the southern city of Khan Younis on Thursday. The TV network confirmed the death of Samir Abu Dakka and the injury of Wael Dahdouh in a statement on Friday.
The network said that Abu Dakka and Dahdouh were covering the aftermath of an earlier attack on the school, which was being used as a shelter by displaced civilians when they were hit by a second drone strike. Dahdouh, who suffered shrapnel wounds, managed to escape from the school and was taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance workers. He told Al Jazeera that he tried to rescue Abu Dakka, who was trapped under the rubble, but the ambulance crews said it was too dangerous and assured him that another ambulance would come for him.
However, no ambulance could reach the school until late in the evening, as the roads were blocked by debris from destroyed buildings. Abu Dakka, who was bleeding profusely, died after several hours of agony and was found by a civilian security team that managed to clear the way to the school. Al Jazeera said that Abu Dakka was a veteran cameraman who had worked for the network for 15 years and had covered many conflicts and crises in the region.
Al Jazeera condemned the attack as a “deliberate targeting of journalists” and called for an international investigation into the incident. It also expressed its solidarity with the families of the victims and the journalists working in Gaza. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Dakka was the 58th Palestinian journalist killed since the start of the conflict between Hamas and Israel on October 7. The death toll also includes four Israeli and three Lebanese journalists.
