Dozens of journalists attended yesterday, Saturday, the funeral of a cameraman of Qatar’s Al Jazeera news television network, who was killed the day before yesterday, Friday, in an Israeli strike in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, according to AFP reporters.

Samir Abu Dakka’s body, on top of which his bulletproof vest marked “Guy” and his helmet were placed, was carried by the crowd to Khan Younis, before being buried in a grave dug by his colleagues.

“Working in the media is dangerous,” said the journalist’s mother, Umm Maher Abu Dakka, accusing Israel of targeting “journalists, especially those working for Al Jazeera.”

Abu Dakka, born in 1978, was reporting for a school in Khan Younis when he was hit by an Israeli drone strike. Seriously wounded, he stayed for hours at the site of the impact as “Israeli forces prevented ambulances” from getting there, according to the television network.

The Israeli army announced for its part that it approved a road for the access of a Palestinian ambulance, but it chose to take another road and was blocked there.

It also noted that it “never deliberately targets journalists” and that it takes “all possible operational measures to protect the lives of civilians and journalists”.

“Given the constant exchanges of fire, staying in an active combat zone carries risks,” he added.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more than 60 journalists and media workers, mostly from Gaza, have died since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out on October 7. sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody attack on Israeli soil, which claimed the lives of around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.