AI Jazeera accuses Israel of targeted killing of two of its journalists

AI Jazeera has accused Israel of the targeted killing of two of its journalists in Gaza as the head of the advocacy group Reporters without Borders decried a "never-ending slaughter" in the territory that had killed 79 journalists in the span of three months.

- Ashifa Kassam

Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria were killed while on assignment for AI Jazeera, the Qatar-based media network said in a statement.

A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded. The health ministry in Gaza confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli strike.

Hamza Dahdouh was the eldest son of AI Jazeera's bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, two other children and a grandson were killed by a previous Israeli strike in October. Soon after news broke of his son's death, Wael Dahdouh, who has been the face of AI Jazeera's 24-hour coverage of this war, was again live on the air.

"The whole world must look at what is happening here in the Gaza Strip," he said on AI Jazeera. "What is happening is a great injustice to defenceless people, civilian people.

It is also unfair for us as journalists." His determination to continue reporting, even as the war takes a devastating personal toll, has turned him into a symbol of the perils faced by Palestinian journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists yesterday said journalists in Gaza were bearing particularly high risks as they scrambled to report the impact of the war.