Al Jazeera journalist Samer Abudaqa was laid to rest at the weekend in southern Gaza, with dozens of mourners, including journalists, paying their respects to the cameraman killed in an Israeli drone attack.
The funeral was held on Saturday in the city of Khan Younis. Abudaqa’s family, friends and colleagues bid a tearful farewell as his body was lowered into the ground.
Abudaqa, a cameraman for Al Jazeera Arabic in Gaza, was hit in an Israeli drone attack while reporting at Farhana school in Khan Younis. His colleague, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Wael Dahdouh, who lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson in a previous Israeli bombing, was wounded.
Journalists in Gaza are carrying a “human and noble message” for the world amid the ongoing war and will continue to work despite Israeli attacks, Dahdouh said in his eulogy.
“We will continue to do our duty with professionalism and transparency,” he said, as mourners around him wept.
On Friday, Dahdouh was hit by shrapnel on his upper arm, and managed to walk to Nasser hospital alone, where he was treated for minor injuries. He said the network’s crew was accompanying civil defence rescuers on a mission to evacuate a family after its home was bombed.
“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 from his hospital bed.
As the Al Jazeera journalists were heading back on foot because the areas were not accessible by car, Dahdouh said “something big” happened that knocked him to the ground.
After the explosion, Dahdouh said he pressed on his wounds and walked out of the area to get help, but by the time he reached an ambulance, medics said they could not return to the site of the attack because it was too dangerous.
Subsequent efforts to coordinate a safe passage to send rescuers for Abudaqa were delayed, Dahdouh said, adding that one ambulance that tried to reach the cameraman came under fire.
“We got in the ambulance, I asked them to go back to where I was because Samer was still there and he was screaming and he was calling for help,” Dahdouh said before hearing news of Abudaqa’s killing.
“He got injured in the lower part of his body but the paramedics told me that we need to leave immediately and that they will send another ambulance so that we won’t be all targeted.”
On Friday, the Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the attack and extended its condolences to Abudaqa’s family in Gaza and Belgium.
It said in a statement that it “holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families”.
“In today’s bombing in Khan Younis, Israeli drones fired missiles at a school where civilians sought refuge, resulting in indiscriminate casualties,” the network said.
“Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over 5 hours, as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment,” the statement added.
