Journalist Samer Abudaqa of Al Jazeera was murdered in an Israeli attack in Gaza and “continued to bleed for five hours.”

Al Jazeera said that on Friday while covering a school in the southern part of the besieged area, chief Gaza journalist Wael Dahdouh was injured in an Israeli attack that claimed the life of Palestinian cameraman Samer Abudaqa.

After the school was struck by a strike earlier in the day, Abudaqa and Dahdouh attended the Farhana school in Khan Younis, Gaza. The network said that an Israeli drone launched a second attack on the school as they were reporting live from the scene. Get Real-Time Israel-Hamas War Updates

Speaking to Al Jazeera from a hospital bed, Dahdouh, who was severely injured in his arm and shoulder, said he managed to exit the school while bleeding and managed to locate many emergency personnel. He requested them to find Abudaqa, but they told him it would be too dangerous and that they would send another ambulance to get him, according to Dahdouh.

The last Dahdouh saw of Abudaqa, he collapsed on the ground, bleeding. Dahdouh said, “He was screaming and calling for help.”

Later, Al Jazeera claimed that an ambulance attempted to approach the school in order to rescue its cameraman but was forced to reroute due to routes being blocked by the debris from the demolished homes. Al Jazeera stated in a statement that Abudaqa bled for many more hours until a civil defense team discovered him dead.

According to Dahdouh, the network team was escorting civil defense rescuers on an evacuation operation for a family whose house had been destroyed.

Al Jazeera cited Dahdouh as saying, “We captured the devastating destruction and reached places that had not been reached by any camera lens since the Israeli ground operation started.”

Dahdouh said “something big” occurred to knock him to the ground while the Al Jazeera journalists were returning on foot since the locations were inaccessible by automobile, the network stated.

Al Jazeera denounces the assault.
The Al Jazeera Media Network expressed its condolences to Abudaqa’s family in Gaza and Belgium and denounced the incident.

According to the statement, “Israel is responsible for the systematic targeting and killing of Al Jazeera journalists and their families by the Network.”

The statement also stated, “After Samer’s injury, Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment, leaving him to bleed to death for over 5 hours.”

Wael Dahdouh lost four family members in an Israeli air attack in late October.

UN ambassador for Palestine Riyad Mansour responds
In the meantime, Israel “targets those who could document (their) crimes and inform the world, the journalists,” according to Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour, who was speaking at a General Assembly meeting on the conflict.

Mansour expressed his sorrow, saying, “We mourn one of those journalists, Samer Abu Daqqa, who was wounded in an Israeli drone strike and left to bleed to death while ambulances were prevented from reaching him.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted between Hamas and Israel: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.

The 45-year-old Abudaqa, a native of Khan Younis, began working for Al Jazeera in June 2004 and held the positions of editor and cameraman. He leaves a daughter and three sons behind.