Tariq Al-Maidna, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist and a freelance camera operator for the Al Houthi controlled Yemen TV, was killed on January 29, 2024, in an Israeli drone strike on the Saftawi area, northwest of Gaza City, when he was parking his car after arriving with the channel’s correspondent Wadih Abu Al-Saud to cover the withdrawl of Israeli forces in the area, according to SKeyes, and Al-Maidna’s father and Abu Al Saud, who both spoke to CPJ.
Abu Al-Saud told CPJ that on the day of the attack, as every day, they were driving a car with the word “Press” clearly written on it. “As soon as I arrived and got out of the car, Tariq was still finding a place to park it, when an Israeli drone struck him with a missile, and he was martyred immediately,” he said.
Abu Al-Saud accused Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting the car because it belonged to journalists.”.
Tariq’s father, Muhammad Al-Maidna, told CPJ: “We live in the al-Tuffah neighborhood northeast of Gaza City, and we were displaced from our home more than ten times because of the danger of the location. He said that because his son was busy covering the war “we used to see him once a week, so we only saw him two days before his martyrdom.”
He explained that Tariq, the second son of the family to be killed during the war, had only finished high school, but his passion for photography pushed him to learn it. “He did not learn photography at university, but in practice. He originally worked as a wedding photographer, and from the beginning of the war he began working as a freelance news cameraman to document the events,” Muhammad Al-Maidna said.
CPJ emailed the North America Desk for the Israel Defense Forces for comment but didn’t immediately receive a response.