Hamza al-Dahdouh
حمزة الدحدوح
Al Jazeera camera operator; eldest son of Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh · c. 1997–2024 · Northeast of Rafah, southern Gaza
Hamza al-Dahdouh, 27, was killed with freelance videographer Mustafa Thuraya when an Israeli drone strike hit their car as they drove back from a filming assignment near Rafah; Israel later alleged he was an Islamic Jihad operative, citing a document that experts questioned and that Al Jazeera and his family rejected as fabricated.
Hamza al-Dahdouh, 27, worked as a journalist and camera operator for Al Jazeera, the network where his father, Wael al-Dahdouh, is Gaza bureau chief. During the war he was displaced with his family and colleagues and kept reporting, his family told the BBC. He was the fifth member of his father’s immediate family killed in the war: his mother, a brother, a sister and a baby nephew had all been killed in earlier Israeli strikes, and his father had himself been hospitalized after being wounded in a strike in December, ABC News reported.
On the morning of January 7, 2024, Hamza joined a group of more than ten journalists who had waited a day — to reduce the risk of a repeat strike — before filming the aftermath of an Israeli strike on the Abu al-Naja family home in Nasr village, known locally as Moraj, northeast of Rafah. As the journalists left the area, an Israeli drone fired a first missile that wounded two other journalists, Amer Abu Amr and Ahmed al-Bursh; about seven minutes later, as the wounded men were driven off in an ambulance, a second drone strike hit the car behind them carrying Hamza, freelance videographer Mustafa Thuraya, journalist Hazem Rajab and their driver, Qusai Salem. Hamza, Thuraya and Salem were killed; Rajab was seriously injured. Colleagues told the Committee to Protect Journalists there were no Israeli troops in the area when Thuraya had briefly flown a camera drone at the site.
The Israeli military first said the car carried “a terrorist who operated an aircraft in a way that put IDF forces at risk,” then alleged that Hamza was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s electronic engineering unit, publishing a document that experts questioned — one told the BBC he had never seen such a group use English alongside Arabic — and that Al Jazeera and the family called a fabrication; relatives noted Hamza held a degree in media and communication technology, with no engineering background. His father buried him and returned to work the next day. “Hamza was all mine, he was my breath, and he was my soul,” Wael al-Dahdouh told ABC News, “but certainly this loss and this pain will not stop us from continuing on this path.”
Sources
Open questions
The Israeli military alleged Hamza belonged to Palestinian Islamic Jihad; experts told the BBC the supporting document was unusual, and the family told CPJ he had received Israeli security approval to leave Gaza two days before he was killed. No independent investigation into the strike is known to have taken place.