An Al Jazeera journalist was left broken after he found out that his wife and two children were killed in an air raid as he reported on the war in Gaza.
Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera Arabic’s bureau head in Gaza, broke down in tears when he discovered that his wife, son, and daughter were killed in an Israeli strike as he entered a hospital to see the bodies of family members in the morgue.
Footage showed the heartbreaking moment the journalist was seen leaving the hospital after touching the face of his son Mahmoud, 15, who had ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps and train as a journalist.
He was also filmed holding the body of his tiny daughter Sham, who was just seven years old, as he looked at her bloodied face and talked to her, Al Jazeera reports.
Al Jazeera said the wife and two children of its Mr Al-Dahdouh were killed in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza strip, and that ‘the rest of his family is buried under the rubble’.
Visibly shaken, Mr Al-Dahdouh told the Arabic news channel that it was ‘clear’ what had happened. ‘This is a series of targeted attacks on children, women and civilians,’ he said.
‘I was just reporting from Yarmouk about such an attack, and the Israeli raids have targeted many areas, including Nuseirat.’
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He said that he had doubted whether the ‘Israeli occupation would not let these people go without punishing them’, adding that this is what had happened the ‘ “safe” area that the occupation army spoke of’.
‘The Al Jazeera Media Network extends its sincere condolences and sympathy to our colleague Wael Al-Dahdouh on the loss of his family in an Israeli airstrike,’ it said.
‘The indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation forces resulted in the tragic loss of his wife, son and daughter, while the rest of his family is buried under the rubble.’
Other members of Mr Al-Dahdouh’s family, including a toddler-aged granddaughter, reportedly survived the attack on the house they were staying in – and operations are ongoing to rescue some people from the wreckage of the home.
Doctors had to perform an emergency operation on his sonson Yehia’s head to repair a serious wound. It was done in a hospital corridor as doctors had difficulty finding the appropriate equipment, eventually resorting to using non-surgical thread to stitch the injury.
