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Al Jazeera reporter and camera operator seriously hurt in Israeli airstrike in Gaza

Correspondent Ismail Abu Omar and photojournalist Ahmad Matar allegedly targeted by IDF

An Al Jazeera correspondent and a photojournalist have been seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike that allegedly targeted the pair while they were working in Gaza.

According to the Doha-based news network, Ismail Abu Omar, one of its correspondents, and his camera operator, Ahmad Matar, were in northern Rafah where they were documenting the living conditions of displaced Palestinian families when they were directly targeted by a missile fired by a drone.

The two journalists were transferred to Gaza’s European hospital, where doctors amputated Omar’s leg in an effort to save his life. Matar was described by Al Jazeera as being in a “serious condition”.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the two were hit in a strike from an Israeli warplane in the Moraj area. Video from the scene of the strike showed both men were wearing protective equipment that identified them as media.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike saying only it would check the details of the incident.

The wounding of the two journalists follows the deaths of scores of Palestinian journalists working in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military at a time when Israel has barred foreign journalists from working in the coastal strip, except when embedded with Israeli forces.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded the deaths of at least 85 journalists and media workers – 78 of them Palestinian – since the war erupted on 7 October. Four Israeli journalists were killed during Hamas’s attack, and three Lebanese journalists have also been killed in Israeli shelling.

This month a group of UN experts condemned the high death toll among journalists working in Gaza. “Journalists are entitled to protection as civilians under international humanitarian law. Targeted attacks and killings of journalists are war crimes,” the UN experts said.

Al Jazeera’s Gaza team has paid a particularly heavy price during the war. The channel’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, lost his wife, Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam in an Israeli air raid.

Dahdouh was later wounded in an Israeli drone strike that killed his colleague, the Al Jazeera camera operator Samer Abu Daqqa, while Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza, a journalist who also worked with Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli attack alongside fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya.