Abdullah Alwan was a prominent audio commentator for Al Jazeera Arabic’s Midan page.
Israeli occupation forces killed Al Jazeera journalist Abdullah Alwan in Gaza on Monday in an air strike that targeted his family’s home in Jabalia, the Qatar-based network reported.
Alwan was a prominent audio commentator for Al Jazeera Arabic’s Midan page and had worked for the organisation since 2017. The network provided no further details on his killing.
The killing of Alwan comes just days after Israel killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa in an air strike on Friday where the network’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, was also injured.
Abu Daqqa, 45, who served as a cameraman with Aljazeera for 20 years, succumbed to his injuries after being trapped inside the Farhana School for six hours as Israeli forces prevented medics from reaching him through nonstop shelling.
The ambulances had to receive prior approval to reach Abu Daqqa, according to Al Jazeera.
Dahdouh’s arm was injured by shrapnel from the Israeli air strike and Palestinians managed to get him to the Nasser Hospital in Gaza, where he underwent surgery.
On Saturday, Al Jazeera took the case to the International Criminal Court.
“Al Jazeera Media Network has instructed its legal team to urgently refer the case of the assassination of its cameraman in Gaza, Samer AbuDaqa to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” the statement said.
“Al Jazeera affirms its commitment to pursuing all options possible to bring those responsible for the crime of Samer’s assassination to the International Criminal Court and to ensure that appropriate legal penalties are imposed on them,” Al Jazeera added.
Al Jazeera established a joint working group on December 16 that includes its international legal team and experts to compile “a comprehensive file for submission to the court’s prosecutor”.
It added that the file it submitted to The Hague will also include “the recurrent attacks” on Al Jazeera’s crew in the occupied Palestinian territories in addition to “instances of incitement against them”.
“According to Article 8 of the Charter of the International Criminal Court, the deliberate targeting of war correspondents or journalists working in war zones or occupied territories through killing or intentional physical assault constitutes a war crime,” Al Jazeera added.
Al Jazeera’s staff have been on the receiving end of threats and attacks as they continue round-the-clock coverage of Israel’s atrocities.
On October 25, Israel killed four family members of Dahdouh in southern Gaza. Dahdouh’s wife, 15-year-old son, seven-year-old daughter and infant grandson were killed by the Israeli strike.
Israel had announced the south to be a safe zone before the attack.
The targeting of journalists has intensified since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7.
Israel has killed 75 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since the beginning of the war, according to figures published by Palestine’s news agency (Wafa) on 15 December.
Updated figures by the International Federation of Journalists said that Israel killed 66 Palestinian journalists and media workers since the beginning of the war.
As of Saturday, Israel has killed at least 19,677 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Euro-Med reported a much higher figure on Sunday of 25,612, including 10,091 children and those who are presumed dead under the rubble. The European agency has not updated the figure since December 17.
