Hamza, 27, was on assignment for the Al Jazeera news network, where his father is the Gaza bureau chief, when a strike “targeted” the car he was traveling in near the southern city of Rafah, the network said.
Another journalist, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured, according to Al Jazeera. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to requests for comment about the strike, or its intended target.
In a brutal war that has killed nearly 23,000 people in Gaza, including scores of journalists, Wael al-Dahdouh, 53, has become a symbol, his perseverance a rare source of hope for Palestinians who feel his tragedy echoes their own.
In October, when the death toll in Gaza had reached 7,000, Wael came off the air to learn that his wife, two children and infant grandson had been killed in an Israeli strike. In December, as the toll neared 19,000, an Israeli drone attack wounded Wael and killed his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, as they reported in Khan Younis.
On both occasions, he was back on air the next day.
In a video posted on social media, Wael is shown at Hamza’s wedding in 2022, all smiles and arms thrown wide open as guests chucked him, the groom’s father, aloft, and then caught him again.
On Sunday, he looked empty, standing over Hamza’s body at the morgue, clutching his hand and muttering softly. Later, he wrapped his arms around Wafaa, his son’s inconsolable widow, as she placed her face on Hamza’s chest.
The pain became “harder and more severe” each time, Wael told Al Jazeera on Sunday. “I wish that the blood of my son Hamza is the last of journalists and the last of people here in Gaza and for this massacre to stop.”
In comments Sunday in Doha, Qatar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the killings as “an unimaginable tragedy,” saying that as a parent he “can’t begin to imagine the horror” that Wael has experienced, “not once, but now twice.”
The Biden administration says it has urged Israel to do more to limit civilian casualties in Gaza, but U.S. weaponry has played a central role in the military campaign, and the United States has vetoed successive U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire.
Hamza’s last message on X, formerly Twitter, was a message to his father. “Do not despair,” he wrote, alongside an image of Wael reporting from a blast site in his familiar navy and white flak jacket, marked “PRESS.”
At least 79 journalists and media workers have been killed since the Oct 7. attack by Hamas on southern Israel, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Around 1,200 people were killed in that initial assault.
The punishing war Israel launched in response, aimed at dislodging Hamas from power, has killed 22,835, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The campaign has also collapsed much of the health system, and left the besieged Palestinian enclave nearing famine, according to the United Nations.
The London-based charity Save the Children said Sunday that more than 10 Palestinian children per day, on average, have lost one or both of their legs since the conflict in Gaza began.
Trapped there, too, are more than 120 Israeli and foreign hostages, kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack. Many of them are believed to be in poor health and subsisting on limited rations. Their friends and family gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday, urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to bring them home.
“I want them to come back alive, and not in coffins,” said 18-year-old Ofir Engel, until recently a captive himself, in a video broadcast to the crowd. Hamas released 110 hostages in late November as part of a deal with Israel that paused the fighting for a week.
The Committee to Protect Journalists urged an independent investigation Sunday into Hamza and Thuraya’s deaths, to determine whether they were targeted. Agence-France Presse, a global news agency, said that Thuraya, a freelance journalist, had also worked as a stringer for the outlet since 2019.
“We vigorously condemn all attacks against journalists doing their jobs and it is essential we have a clear explanation as to what happened,” global news director Phil Chetwynd said.
In photos and videos of the strike’s aftermath, which were shared online, the car Hamza and Thuraya were riding in was a mangled heap — its roof blown off, frame twisted in the road, and two front seats singed with black. In one video, a man from the crowd that had gathered around the vehicle placed a blanket over a passenger in the back seat, someone who appeared to be wounded.
During three months of war, hundreds of Palestinian journalists in Gaza have provided the world with intimate views of the devastation the conflict has brought to people’s lives, while also trying to survive themselves and keep their families safe.
They calm and console children, scavenge for food and water, and race between the hospitals and destroyed buildings to report on deaths and injuries, hoping that no friends or relatives are there when they arrive.
“The Al Dahdouh family and their journalist colleagues in Gaza are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today with immensely brave and never-seen-before sacrifices,” said Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In an interview with Al Jazeera English on Sunday, which dedicated much of its rolling coverage to the journalists’ slayings, Antoine Bernard, director of advocacy and assistance at Reporters Without Borders, said that the organization had “reasonable grounds” to believe that some of the reporters killed in Gaza since the war began were targeted.
“We claim at the minimum war crimes have been perpetrated against journalists,” he said.
An investigation by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International concluded that IDF forces had targeted a group of Lebanese, American and Iraqi journalists in south Lebanon on Oct. 13. The Israeli military has denied allegations that it targets journalists, insisting it targets only militants.
“Israel says it does not target journalists. It needs to explain whether it used one of its drones for a precision attack on these two journalists and why it launched strikes on those like Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was clearly wearing press insignia and away from direct fighting,” said Mansour.
In interviews Sunday, Hamza and Thuraya’s journalistic colleagues appeared bereft. Hind al-Khoudary, 28, spoke through tears as she recalled Hamza telling her to move closer to where he was staying, a place that he believed to be safer than where she was in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
When she posted a video to social media showing a woman baking cinnamon buns, Hamza had joked that he wanted some himself.
Believing there is safety in numbers, many of Gaza’s journalists stay in tents and travel together. Adil Abu Taha, 33, a freelance cameraman for Al-Kufiya TV, said that he ate dinner with Hamza on Saturday night, and they had spoken of little but work. The dinner, he said, was “simple” but “full of warmth.”
Bashar Talib, 34, said that the pair had shared breakfast Sunday morning, and had resolved to meet again later that day.
“As a journalist, I feel very afraid. I am not the only one,” Talib said. Even some of the residents he interviewed recently seemed wary of his presence, he added, “for fear that one of us would be targeted while we were with them.”
In a post on Facebook, Anas al-Najjar, a correspondent for China Media Group, wrote that he would no longer be reporting on this war.
“Seeking safety with family is a thousand times better than searching for news to convey to a world that doesn’t know the meaning of empathy,” he wrote. “May God have mercy on journalist colleagues.”
Harb and Hassan reported from London, and Mahfouz from Cairo. John Hudson in Doha, Niha Masih in Seoul, Kareem Fahim in Istanbul, Hazem Balousha in Amman and Erin Cunningham in Washington contributed to this report.
