Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent loses 4 family members in an Israeli airstrike
Cairo: Al Jazeera's chief correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Wael Dahdouh, was helping broadcast live images of the besieged territory's night sky when he received the devastating news: His wife, son, and daughter had all been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday.
Moments later, the Qatari-based satellite channel switched to footage of Dahdouh entering al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza before giving way to grief as he peered over the body of his dead son.
“They take revenge on us in our children?” he said, kneeling over his son’s bloodied body, still wearing his protective press vest from that day’s work.
Dahdouh’s grandson also was declared dead two hours later, the network reported.
The video was sure to reverberate across the Arab world, where the 53-year-old journalist is well-known as the face of Palestinians during many wars. He is revered in his native Gaza for telling people's stories of suffering and hardship to the outside world.
According to Al Jazeera, Dahdouh's family members were killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit Nuseirat Refugee Camp, located in an area of Gaza where the military had encouraged people to go to stay safe. It said a number of other relatives were still missing, and it remained unclear how many others were killed.
Dahdouh’s family were among the more than 1 million Gaza residents displaced by the war, now in its 19th day, and were staying in a house in Nuseirat when the strike hit, the network said.
The Israeli strikes have killed more than 6,500 Palestinians, Gaza's Health Ministry says. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death toll.
The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.
Late Wednesday, Al Jazeera replayed the moment Dahdouh was informed about the deaths. In an audio recording, he is heard picking up a phone and telling a frantic caller multiple times: “Who are you with?”
Earlier, Dahdouh was on air, covering the aftermath of a separate strike that had killed at least 26 people, according to local officials. Throughout the war, Dahdouh has remained in Gaza City, despite Israeli calls for residents to head south ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to Nuseirat and other locations in central and southern Gaza, believing them to be safer. But Israeli strikes have continued to pound these areas, which are suffering dire shortages of water, medicine and fuel under an Israeli siege.
“This is the safe area which the occupation army talked about, the moral army,” said Dahdouh with bitter sarcasm to a fellow a Al Jazeera reporter at the al-Aqsa hospital.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said Dahdouh’s family's “home was targeted” in an “indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation.”
The Israeli army had no immediate comment. It says it strikes only Hamas military targets, but the Palestinians say thousands of civilians have died. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Israel has threatened to shut down Al Jazeera over its coverage of the war. Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-owned media network and is deeply critical of Israel, particularly its treatment of Palestinians.
Over the last week, the gas-rich nation of Qatar has emerged as a key intermediary over the fate of more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 assault. Qatar has hosted Hamas’ political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade. The capital, Doha, is home to Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader, and also Khaled Mashaal, Haniyeh's predecessor.
Four of the hostages have been released, a mother and daughter on Friday and two more on Monday. In an interview with Sky News this week, Mashaal said all Israeli hostages could be released if Israel stopped its aerial bombardment of Gaza.
The family of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh has been killed in an Israeli attack at the Al Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza, where they had forcibly evacuated to shelter from Israeli bombardments ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/ya64Lgunbp
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 25, 2023
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BJP using women's quota bill as front to pass Delimitation Bill that will break India: Mamata
Cooch Behar (WB) (PTI): Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday alleged the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre was using the proposed amendment to the women's quota law in Parliament as a front for the Delimitation Bill that would "break the country into pieces".
The TMC will fight this Central government's move at every step, she asserted at her party's poll rally here.
The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women's quota law, along with the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, to implement the proposed amended women's quota law, in the Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, were introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
According to the Constitution amendment bill, Lok Sabha seats will be increased to a maximum of 850 from the current 543 to "operationalise" the women's reservation law before the 2029 parliamentary polls, following a delimitation exercise based on the 2011 Census.
Seats will also be increased in state and Union territory assemblies to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women.
Opposing the Centre's move, Banerjee alleged that "the BJP brought the Delimitation Bill while keeping the women's reservation bill at the front".
"The BJP is trying to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha to nearly 850 through the Delimitation Bill. It will break the country into pieces," the TMC supremo said.
She also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not speaking the truth about the development of north Bengal at a BJP rally last week.
"The prime minister said nothing was done for the development of north Bengal. But we spent Rs 1.72 lakh crore on the development of the region," Banerjee said and asked Modi to cross-check data before making such remarks.
