Jazeera journalist Wael Al Dahdouh – who 24 hours ago mourned the death of his wife, son, daughter and nine other family members in an Israeli air strike – has vowed to continue reporting on Tel Aviv’s war on Gaza. Mr Dahdouh told state-run Turkish news agency Anadolu, “This will never silence our voices. Journalism is my noble mission.” “Israel is targeting civilians and committing massacres against families. This is part of what Palestinian families living in Gaza go through every day,” Mr Dahdouh said.

Mr Dahdouh, who is Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, was told his wife and children had been killed shortly after a live broadcast from the besieged enclave on Thursday.

Hours later Al Jazeera aired visuals from the morgue in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Palestine’s Deir el-Balah, where a grief-stricken Wael Al Dahdouh cradled the body of his seven-year-old daughter and cried over those of his wife and 15-year-old son.

READ | “In Gaza, No Safe Place”: Girl’s Plea Before Mother Dies In Israeli Strike

Mr Dahdouh’s two older children – Mahmoud and his sister Kholoud – are believed to have survived the attack. Days earlier they had shared a video message to the global community, highlighting the utter devastation in Gaza and pleading for help.

“Help us to stay alive” was their outcry to the world from Gaza.

Mahmoud, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Wael Dahdouh son, joined by his sister Kholoud, sent a message to the world, days before Mahmoud, his mother, and younger sister Sham were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/HWJ8SjIpvx

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 25, 2023

“Whole neighbourhoods have been destroyed,” Kholoud says in a video that shows residential buildings reduced to rubble and entire streets covered in that debris.

“In Gaza there is no safe place…”

READ | Why Israel Is Attacking South Gaza After Telling Civilians To Go There

The Dahdouh family was among a million civilians ordered by Israel to flee from north Gaza ahead of strikes that targeted residential neighbourhoods, as well as schools, mosques and hospitals. Israel also temporarily rolled tanks into north Gaza – the first step in its widely anticipated ground offensive.

READ | Israeli Tanks Enter North Gaza In “Targeted” Overnight Raid, Retreat Later

The family was sheltering in the United Nations-recognised Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which was called a “safe area” by Israeli forces.

The family of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh has been killed in an Israeli attack at the Al Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza, where they had forcibly evacuated to shelter from Israeli bombardments ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/ya64Lgunbp

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 25, 2023

Despite the loss – shared by tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children from Gaza, Israel and other nationalities caught up in this bloody war – Mr Dahdough insisted to Anadolu he will continue covering Israel’s strikes on Palestinians.

Tel Aviv’s attacks on Gaza follows the October 7 cross-border attack by Hamas that claimed over 1,400 lives, including civilians and children. Israel has described the Hamas terrorists as “animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised revenge.

Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the conflict – the bloodiest of the five wars between Israel and Gaza so far. The dead include more than 6,500 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis, as well as foreign nationalities.

Tel Aviv has allowed small aid convoys to enter Gaza, a heavily blockaded strip of land home to over two million people, but it is only a fraction of basic supplies needed.

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Comedian Hasan Minhaj was accused in a recent New Yorker magazine story of fabricating or exaggerating the personal stories he tells in his stand-up routine. The article suggested that he was not truthful in his accounts of his life experiences, particularly those related to his experiences as a Muslim American and an Asian American. In response to this article, Hasan Minhaj, The Daily Show alum, released a detailed 21-minute video countering the allegations.

The article in The New Yorker implied that Hasan Minhaj may have stretched the truth when sharing his personal encounters with racism, Islamophobia, and political challenges.

Watch the video here:

In response to The New Yorker’s claims, Hasan Minhaj offers additional details on three stories from his stand-up routine that came under scrutiny. These stories involve his experience of being rejected for a prom date due to racism, encounters with undercover law enforcement monitoring the Muslim community in his hometown, and a personal incident involving an anthrax scare at his residence.

In the beginning of the video, he said he understands if fans are asking, “Is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that.”

“I just want to say to anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by my stand-up, I am sorry. I made artistic choices to express myself and drive home larger issues affecting me and my community, and I feel horrible that I let people down.”

“And the reason I feel horrible is because I’m not a psycho,” he added. “But this New Yorker article definitely made me look like one.” He said the article was “needlessly misleading, not just about my standup but also about me as a person. The truth is, racism, FBI surveillance, and the threats to my family happened.”

“So I’m going to do the most Hasan Minhaj thing ever: I’m going to do a deep dive on my own scandal, with graphics, because there is so much evidence I gave the New Yorker that they ignored that I want to show you,” he continued.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, in Minhaj’s Netflix special Homecoming King, he tells a story of asking a white girl (whom he gives the pseudonym “Bethany Reed”) to prom, only to show up at her house and be told by her mother that Bethany won’t go with him because her family doesn’t want their daughter in pictures with “a brown boy.”

“Bethany’s mom really did say that-it was just a few days before prom,” he said in the video. “I created the doorstep scene to drop the audience into the feeling of that moment, which I told the reporter.”

In the video, Hasan Minhaj plays an audio clip of a portion of his conversation with writer Clare Malone, where they discuss the particular scene in question.

Additionally, the video presents emails and text messages exchanged between Minhaj and Bethany, demonstrating that he provided this evidence to the magazine. These messages show Bethany expressing gratitude to Minhaj for his efforts in protecting her and her family.

 Commander of the Darj Tafah battalion of Hamas, Rafat Abbas and the commander of combat and administrative assistance, Tarek Maruf, have been killed using fighter jets, it said adding that Rafat Abbas’ deputy, Ebrahim Jedeva, was also killed. “The battalion is considered to be the most significant brigade of the Hamas,” IDF said.Israel army yesterday said it had sent tanks, troops and armoured bulldozers into the enclave in a “targeted raid” on Wednesday night that destroyed multiple sites before withdrawing.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — amid the growing calls to temper the ferocious bombing campaign — said Israel had been “raining down hellfire on Hamas” and killing “thousands of terrorists”. He said his war cabinet and the military would determine the timing of a “ground offensive” with the goal to “eliminate Hamas” and “bring our captives home”.Hamas’ armed wing said Israeli strikes have killed almost 50 of the 222 hostages its operatives seized during the attacks. Hamas has released four hostages so far. The Palestinian group released two elderly Isreli women on Monday citing “compelling humanitarian” reasons, after mediation by Qatar and Egypt. Their release comes days after a US mother and daughter were freed.The US military struck two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups today. The strikes in Syria follow a direct warning from President Joe Biden to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the strikes on US troops. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, however,  sought to distance the Syria strikes from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.  US forces have been attacked more than a dozen times in Iraq and Syria in the past week by what Washington suspects are Iran-backed groups. Since then, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s relentless retaliatory bombardments, mostly civilians and many of them children.International alarm has increased amid growing shock about the scale of human suffering inside the besieged Palestinian territory where Israel has cut off most water, food, fuel and other basic supplies.European Union leaders called for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” to get aid into Gaza as the United Nations warned “nowhere” in the territory is safe from Israel’s retaliation for bloody Hamas attacks.The October 7 attacks saw Hamas operatives pour from Gaza into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping 224 more. Israel has retaliated with relentless strikes that Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said have killed more than 7,000 people, also mainly civilians.