Israeli strike kills Al Jazeera photojournalist on one year anniversary of colleague’s death
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed an Al Jazeera photojournalist on Sunday – exactly one year to the day after an attack killed one of his colleagues.
Ahmad Al-Louh, 39, and four other people were killed by the strike that targeted an office of the Civil Defense service in central Gaza’s Nuseirat Camp area, according to Al Awda Hospital, which treated the casualties.
Al Jazeera has condemned the attack, saying Al-Louh was “brutally killed” while covering the service’s attempt to rescue a family that had been severely injured in an earlier bombing.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted the Civil Defense offices in a “precise strike,” claiming the site was being used as a “command-and-control center” by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who were planning an “imminent terror attack against IDF troops.”
It said Al-Louh was among those killed in the strike and alleged he was a “terrorist” who had previously served with Islamic Jihad. The IDF did not provide any proof for their allegations.
In late July, an IDF strike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul, who it accused of being a Hamas member – an allegation the network slammed as “baseless.”
CNN has reached out to Al Jazeera about the IDF’s allegations about Al-Louh.
CNN footage shows ambulances taking the casualties to the hospital. Some of them are still wearing civil defense vests. It shows one motionless body being carried on a blanket being used as a makeshift stretcher. It also shows Al-Louh’s body on the floor, press vest draped over him, as people surround him. His brother Sajed leans over Al-Louh crying, “Hamada! Oh God,” addressing his deceased brother by nickname.
According to the hospital, the other people killed in the strike were three Civil Defense workers and one civilian.
A spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense strongly denied the IDF’s claim of a terrorist presence at the site.
“These teams work around the clock to rescue people. Everyone knows that the Civil Defense organization is a humanitarian body that provides services during both peace and war to civilians and has no political involvement. The team was directly targeted,” said Zaki Imad Eddine.
This ‘follows a pattern’: Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera, which has in the past accused Israel of systematically targeting its journalists – a charge Israel denies, described Al-Louh’s killing as a crime and said it followed a pattern of attacks in which its workers had been killed or injured by Israeli attacks.
It noted that Al-Louh’s death coincided with the first anniversary of the killing of one of its cameramen, Samer Abu Daqqa, who died on December 15, 2023, after sustaining injuries in an Israeli attack on southern Gaza.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Abu Daqqa was the first Al Jazeera journalist to have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war since the October 7 terror attack of 2023. Since then, a string of other journalists with the network have been killed or injured in Gaza, in disputed circumstances.
