Samer Abudaqa, cameraman for news channel Al Jazeera, was making a report on Friday in a school in Khan Younis that was previously hit by an Israeli missile. While he was in the building with his colleague Wael Dahdouh, the area was attacked again by a drone.
“Suddenly something happened, something big. I couldn’t tell what it was, I just felt something big happen and me being pushed to the ground. My helmet and microphone fell,” Dahdouh told Al Jazeera from his hospital bed. “I saw that I was bleeding profusely from my shoulder and arm and realized that if I stayed, I would continue to bleed right there in that spot and no one would be able to reach me.”
Despite his serious injuries, Dahdouh was able to seek help several hundred meters away. “We got into the ambulance and I asked them to go back to where I was because Samer was still there,” Dahdouh said. “The paramedics told me we had to leave immediately and that they would send another ambulance so we wouldn’t all be targeted.”
But help never reached the cameraman in time. The situation was too unsafe. An ambulance that tried to save him was fired upon. Abudaqa died after lying on the street bleeding for more than five hours.
“Will continue to do duty”
Abudaqa was buried on Saturday in southern Gaza. His body, wearing body armor and helmet, was carried through the city by a crowd before being lowered into a grave dug by fellow journalists.
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Journalists in Gaza are carrying a “human and noble message” to the world amid the ongoing war and will continue to work despite Israeli attacks, Dahdouh said at the funeral. “We will continue to do our duty with professionalism and transparency.” Dahdouh himself also lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson during an Israeli attack.
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News channel Al Jazeera said in a statement that it “holds Israel responsible for the systematic targeting and killing of Al Jazeera journalists and their families.” “In today’s (Friday, ed.) bombing in Khan Younis, Israeli drones fired missiles at a school where civilians were taking refuge, causing indiscriminate casualties,” the network said. “After Samer was injured, he bled to death for more than 5 hours as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescuers from reaching him, depriving him of much-needed emergency treatment,” the statement added.
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© REUTERS
Lawsuit at International Criminal Court
Samer Abudaqa was born in 1978 and has worked for Al Jazeera since 2004. His family, three sons and a daughter, live in Belgium. They have decided to file a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC). His son Yazan Abu Daqqa told Al Jazeera that he is “going to claim his father’s rights and file a lawsuit with the ICC and I need your support.” Speaking from Belgium, Yazan said Israeli forces deliberately targeted his father, who was “doing his job as a journalist and delivering his message to the world.”
“My father was not a fighter, what did he do?” Yazan said. “He wasn’t carrying a missile, he was carrying a camera.”
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) has also called on the Israeli army (IDF) to investigate the death of Samer Abudaqa and considers the cameraman’s death a serious blow to the already limited press freedom in Gaza.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abudaqa is the 64th journalist killed since the conflict between Hamas and Israel broke out on October 7. Fifty-seven Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese journalists were killed.