Egypt’s Journalists Syndicate condemns killing Al Jazeera cameraman in Gaza as war crime
Ahram Online , Saturday 16 Dec 2023
Egypt’s Journalists Syndicate condemned, as premeditated murder and full-fledged war crime, Israel's killing of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa late Friday, while reporting its airstrike on a school shelter in the south of the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a statement on Saturday, the syndicate also condemned the targeting of Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent in Gaza, who also suffered severe injuries to his arm and shoulder during the attack.
Al-Dahdouh, who had lost four members of his family in an Israeli airstrike in late October, was able to flee bleeding from Farhana School in Khan Yunis, south of the strip, following the attack on Friday.
Abu Daqqa, 45, was forced to wait bleeding for hours, as no ambulance was allowed to reach the school amid the heavy Israeli shelling in the area until a civil defense crew found him dead.
The Egyptian syndicate stressed its readiness to join all international efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the crime against Abu Daqqa and more than 90 journalists – who were also killed while on duty by Israel – before the International Criminal Court as war criminals.
The syndicate also asserted that leaving Abu Daqqa to bleed for six hours is premeditated murder and a full-fledged war crime, adding that the perpetrators must be held accountable, according to the statement.
The targeting of Abu Daqqa and Al-Dahdouh is part of a broader, brutal crime against the Palestinian people as well as press and media workers, who strive to convey the truth on the Palestinian lands, it affirmed.
Over almost two months, Israel killed around 90 journalists and media workers, targeted dozens of their families, destroyed more than 50 Palestinian media outlets, and arrested 18 colleagues to obliterate the truth, the statement noted.
The syndicate urged press freedom organizations to push for allowing journalists from all over the world to cover the war on the ground, for exposing the genocidal crime against a people whose only “crime” is defending their freedom against one of the most heinous settler occupations in modern history.
On Friday, Al Jazeera said it held Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing its journalists and their families.
Dozens of journalists took part in Abu Daqqa's funeral on Saturday.
Abu Daqqa’s body was carried through a crowd in Khan Yunis city before being buried in a grave dug by fellow journalists.
His mother Umm Maher Abu Daqqa accused Israel of targeting journalists, especially those working for Al Jazeera.