Cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa had been with Dahdouh on Friday when the pair traveled to cover Israel’s bombing of Farhana school in Khan Younis, which had been hosting displaced Palestinians.

But after they arrived, they were hit by a drone strike, according to Al Jazeera. Dahdouh managed to leave the area as the bombardment continued, but Abu Daqqa could not and desperately tried to crawl to safety.

Ambulances tried to reach the area, but the road was blocked by the rubble of a bombed building. The network reported that three civil defense workers died while trying to reach him.

“Samer continued to bleed for several hours, until the Civil Defense crew found him dead,” Al Jazeera English said in an internal note Friday. Abu Daqqa, 45, was a father of four and resident of Khan Younis, the city he died covering.

The war has taken a huge toll on Gaza’s journalists, with 56 killed since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Hamas in October, according to Reporters Without Borders. Some 13 of those have been killed while at work, while the others were killed in their homes or going about their daily lives.

“This is a massacre for journalism and journalists working on the ground,” Suruq As’ad, a spokeswoman of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate based in West Bank. “They are all locals. They are targeted and their surroundings are targeted: loved ones, their neighborhoods, their cities, their friends, their offices and they go on to do their jobs as reporters, as camera people, as correspondents.”

She said that the Al Jazeera team was clearly marked as press when they traveled to cover the bombing at the school, with markings on their car and safety gear, accusing Israel of war crimes. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for a comment.

Loay Ayyoub, a photographer who works with The Washington Post, said he’d become close to Abu Daqqa during the war, as they spent time together at al-Nasser hospital, where the injured and the dead are endlessly ferried in.

Still, Abu Daqqa always managed to smile, he said. “Everyone loved him. At the end of each work day, we’d sit until the dawn hours and chat.”

His family is outside of Gaza, Ayyoub said. “He always told me, ‘There is a safer place outside Gaza,’ ” he said.

In an interview this week, Dahdouh, renowned for his relentless coverage of the war in the face of personal tragedy, recounted his hardest moment as a reporter.

“When a journalist becomes the news instead of reporting it,” he told the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, strapped into his blue press flak jacket. “And instead of getting the image and broadcasting it, he becomes the image.”

He was referring to the devastating deaths of 14 members of his extended family, including his wife, Amna, his 15-year-old son Mahmoud and his 7-year-old daughter Sham, during an Israeli strike on his home in October. His 1½-year-old grandson was also killed.

Less than 24 hours after he posted a clip of the interview on his Instagram feed, Dahdouh was part of the story again. And the same press vest was stained with blood.

Hazem Balousha and Nisa Masih contributed to this report.