Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 25, the network said.
Wael al-Dahdouh has been a steady face of wartime news out of Gaza for Al Jazeera Arabic viewers. But on Wednesday night, his work turned personal when he learned that the strikes he had covered from the ground all day had claimed the lives of his wife, teenage son, daughter and grandson, and eight other members of his extended family.
Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned news channel for which Dahdouh works, said the journalist’s family was killed in an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp. When asked to comment, the Israeli military said it“targeted Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area” without providing further details or evidence.
“He reported on that strike earlier, without knowing that some family members were among the dead in that Israeli bombing,” Wajd Waqfi, Al Jazeera Arabic’s senior White House correspondent, said in a post on the social media platform X.
The Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that the network “strongly condemns the indiscriminate targeting and killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, which has led to the loss of Wael Al-Dahdouh’s family and countless others.”
In its statement, the Israel Defense Forces also said it had “been targeting military targets across the Gaza Strip. Strikes on military targets are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties.”
