Al Jazeera bureau chief leaves Gaza for treatment

GAZA — Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh left the Palestinian territory Tuesday, he told AFP, after Israeli strikes killed his wife, multiple children and a colleague.

Scenes of Dahdouh mourning his family and fleeing on foot from Gaza City have been broadcast globally over the weeks since war erupted between Hamas militants and Israel on Oct. 7.

Speaking to an AFP journalist in southern Gaza, the 53-year-old said he had crossed the Rafah border post with Egypt.

Dahdouh said he is due to travel onward to Qatar where he will undergo surgery for a wound sustained in an Israeli strike last month, which killed the Qatar-based network's cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and several others.

His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed by an Israeli strike in October on central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, while his eldest son was killed this month when the Israeli army targeted the car he was driving in Rafah with a videographer who worked for AFP.

Dahdouh entered Egypt along with a relative on Tuesday, after four of his children made the crossing last week, he told AFP.

Khaled Elbalshy, head of the Egyptian journalists' syndicate, said the organization had spoken to Dahdouh after he left Gaza.

The syndicate "thanks all the Egyptian state agencies and those who made efforts to help in the case of Wael Dahdouh and treating wounded Palestinians," Elbalshy wrote on Facebook.

At least 82 journalists have been killed during the war, 75 of them in Gaza, according to a tally from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

At least 24,285 Palestinians, more than 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since Oct. 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The unprecedented Hamas attack on Oct. 7 resulted in the death of around 1,140 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.