An Al Jazeera cameraman was killed and the community’s Arabic-language Gaza Strip bureau chief was wounded on Friday throughout an assault in southern Gaza, Al Jazeera said, the most recent in a protracted string of journalist casualties within the battle.
The cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, and Wael al-Dahdouh, the bureau chief, have been protecting the aftermath of airstrikes at a U.N. school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis when each have been wounded, the community mentioned. Mr. al-Dahdouh instructed Al Jazeera that he was in a position to stroll out of the realm and search assist, however Mr. Abu Daqqa died from his accidents, the community mentioned.
In October, Mr. al-Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and infant grandson were killed on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the place that they had been sheltering.
Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera’s managing editor, described Mr. Abu Daqqa as “a compassionate soul” whose pictures “captured the uncooked and unfiltered actuality and life in Gaza.”
“Within the pursuit of fact, our cameraman confronted immense dangers to deliver viewers a deeper understanding of the human expertise in Gaza,” he mentioned in a put up on social media. “His lens turned a window into the lives of these affected by battle, shedding mild on tales that wanted to be instructed.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group based mostly in New York that defends the rights of journalists world wide, 64 journalists and media employees have been killed in Gaza because the battle between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, greater than in another comparable time frame because the group began amassing information in 1992.
The C.P.J. defines journalists as “individuals who cowl information or touch upon public affairs by way of print, digital, broadcast media and different means,” and media employees as important assist workers, together with translators, drivers and fixers. The group has mentioned it doesn’t embody folks in its tallies if there may be proof of their “appearing on behalf of militant teams or serving in a navy capability on the time of their deaths.”
Based on the C.P.J.’s information, among the 64 killed in Gaza have been freelancers and didn’t work for conventional information retailers, and its web site famous that it was unclear whether or not all of them have been protecting the battle on the time of their deaths. Israel and Egypt have largely prevented worldwide journalists from getting into the enclave because the battle started; Hamas, which controls Gaza, has lengthy restricted what the information media there can cowl.
Carlos Martínez de la Serna, C.P.J.’s program director, said the organization was concerned about “the sample of assaults on Al Jazeera journalists and their households.”
In a statement, Al Jazeera blamed Israel for Friday’s assault in Khan Younis and for “systematically focusing on and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their households.” It urged “the worldwide neighborhood, media freedom organizations, and the Worldwide Prison Court docket to take quick motion to carry the Israeli authorities and navy accountable.”
The Israeli navy didn’t instantly reply to the accusations. Khan Younis is certainly one of three areas that Israel has mentioned it’s focusing on in its battle to eradicate Hamas from Gaza.
John Kirby, a White Home spokesman, mentioned he was not conscious of any proof that Israel was deliberately focusing on journalists, who he mentioned should be protected.
“It’s by no means acceptable to intentionally goal them, as they do such important, harmful, harmful work,” he mentioned, including, “That’s a precept that we’re going to proceed to abide by.”
Worldwide watchdogs have said that an Israeli strike on Oct. 13 that killed a videographer for the Reuters information company and injured six different journalists was a focused assault carried out by the Israeli navy. Earlier this yr, a C.P.J. report discovered that nobody had been held accountable for practically 20 journalists been killed by the Israeli navy since 2001.
Katie Rogers contributed reporting.