Al Jazeera says two Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike

Al Jazeera said Sunday two of its Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip were killed in an Israeli strike on their car, in what the Qatar-based media network claimed was a "targeted killing".

Hamza Wael Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, who also worked as a video stringer for AFP and other news organisations, were killed while they were "on their way to carry out their duty" for the channel in the Gaza Strip, the network said.

A third freelance journalist travelling with them, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza also confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli strike.

Witnesses told AFP that two rockets were fired at the car -- one hit the front of the vehicle and the other hit Hamza who was sitting next to the driver.

"We later found the body parts (of those in the car). The ambulance then came and carried those who were in the car," a witness, who declined to give his name for security reasons, told AFP.

The Israeli army told AFP that it had "struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops", adding that it was "aware of the reports that during the strike, two other suspects who were in the same vehicle as the terrorist were also hit".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the journalists' deaths were an "unimaginable tragedy".

"And that's also been the case for... far too many innocent Palestinian men, women and children," he said in Doha during a regional tour.

AFP video footage showed a crowd of people inspecting the car's mangled remains, while pools of blood lay on the road. No other damage was visible in the area.

Al Jazeera said in a statement it "strongly condemns the Israeli occupation forces' targeting of the Palestinian journalists' car", accusing Israel of "targeting" journalists and "violating the principles of freedom of the press".

Hamza's father Wael al-Dahdouh is Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, and was recently wounded in a strike himself after his wife and two other children were killed in Israeli bombardment in the initial weeks of the war.

"Hamza was everything for me ... while we are full of humanity they (Israel) are full of murder and hatred," Dahdouh said on Al Jazeera