Ola Al Dahdouh, a Palestinian journalist working as an editor and presenter for the local Sawt Al Watan radio station, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her husband’s family home in Gaza City’s Al Jalaa neighborhood, according to SKeyes, WAFA, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate. In a post on her Facebook page, her brother Mohannad said that Ola was killed in the airstrike, which he said happened without any prior alert. Those sources said that Al Dahdouh’s husband, Abdelrahman Helles, and her son, Karam, were wounded in the airstrike.
Wissam Zaghbar, director of radio Sawt Al Watan, told CPJ via messaging app that Al Dahdouh was 28 years old and Karam is 1 1/2 years old.
Al Dahdouh’s house in northern Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood was destroyed in October by Israeli bombing, according to a post by her on Facebook and Zaghbar. After that attack, “the three of them were displaced … to a house that belonged to her husband’s uncle,” Zaghbar said. “On May 31, 2024, that house was hit by an Israeli airstrike that killed her and her husband’s uncle.”
Zaghbar added, “Ola trained at our radio station in 2017 when she was only a media student, then she started working there after her graduation in 2019. She started as an editor in the news division and then became also a presenter, where she shined. She was an editor and a host at the same time and was known for her punctuality even though her program was very early in the morning.”
Before her death, Al Dahdouh posted critical views of Hamas on her Facebook page, including posts calling for the war to end.