At 6:29 am on 7 October 2023, the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip jolted awake to the roar of rockets overhead.  Among them were dozens of journalists who quickly prepared to cover a new conflict with Israel, the previous one having taken place in May 2021. Moments later, several hundred fighters from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, breached the border with Israel at dozens of points.

In Gaza City, even the most experienced news professionals struggled to follow the offensive unfolding in the air, on land and at sea. Many of them — including Nidal al-Wahidi and Haytham Abdel Wahed — rushed to the scene without fully appreciating the risks involved while the Israeli response had yet to begin.

They were two young cameramen; Nidal al-Wahidi was 32 and Haytham Abdel Wahed was 25. Nidal al-Wahidi worked as Gaza correspondent for the Saudi television channel Asharq Business and for An-Najah News, an outlet affiliated with An-Najah University in Nablus, a city in the occupied West Bank. Haytham Abdel Wahed worked for the Gaza-based production company Ain Media. The company’s co-founder, Roshdi Sarraj, was killed by the Israeli army two weeks after the 7 October attacks.

The Hamas offensive had been underway for less than an hour when Haytham Abdel Wahed left Tel el-Hawa, the Gaza City neighbourhood where he was living with his family, according to his brother Hesham. Between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m., he went to Ain Media’s office near the port. Nearly two hours later, Nidal al-Wahidi prepared to set off on his own reporting assignment. A few seconds of footage filmed by a neighbour on a mobile phone show him at the foot of his family’s apartment in the Jabalia refugee camp, a few kilometres north of Gaza City. His brother Yasser recalls that this was around 9:00 a.m. In a street lined with residential buildings, the journalist placed his equipment in the boot of a car.

The two reporters arranged to meet at the foot of the Hajji Tower, home to An-Najah News, near the port district. Ten kilometres separated them from the place where they would later disappear: the Erez border crossing,  a checkpoint in the very northern tip of the Gaza Strip — one of the multiple crossings opened by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, one of the main points through which Hamas fighters entered Israeli territory.

At the Erez checkpoint, Israel bombed journalists

A video shows Haytham Abdel Wahed wearing a press vest and holding a camera among a group of journalists and civilians standing in front of the metal gates of the checkpoint. The footage lasts only a few seconds and captures the final moments before the two reporters disappeared. Nidal al-Wahidi was also spotted there: Mohammed Zaanoun, a photojournalist and documentary-maker for the BBC, told RSF he was about a hundred metres from those same security turnstiles when he caught sight of his friend

Shortly after 10:34 a.m., following the announcement of the Swords of Iron War — the state of Israel’s war against Hamas — an Israeli F-16 fighter jet struck the Erez crossing point. “The impact on the tarmac sent bodies flying in several directions,” Mohammed Zaanoun recalls. “What unfolded before my eyes was the targeted bombing of groups of individuals and journalists.” Was Nidal al-Wahidi among the victims? In Mohammed Zaanoun’s view, this is the “most plausible” explanation, who notes that someone known to be with Nidal al-Wahidi at that time was found dead. “So, where is his body? No one knows.”

No sign of them in hospitals

Hesham Abdel Wahed was informed of his brother Haytham’s disappearance about an hour after the strike. “One of his colleagues called us to say his line had been cut.” The family contacted emergency services and hospitals, all of which were overwhelmed, as well as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which was unable to reach the bombarded border area at the time. The following day, Yasser al-Wahidi, Nidal’s brother, went to the Indonesian Hospital, where most of the casualties had been taken, as it was closest to the Erez crossing.

More than two years later, the families of the two journalists still have no answers. “My personal analysis is that if the Palestinian side of the border was hit, they may have moved forward to escape the explosions,” says Hesham Abdel Wahed. In his view, the recovery of the of body of another Ain Media photojournalist — Ibrahim Lafi, who was killed the same morning at the Erez crossing — casts doubt over what happened to his brother and Nidal al-Wahidi. “What I am certain of is that Nidal, Haytham and Ibrahim were together,” stresses another photojournalist from the production company. However, the circumstances surrounding Ibrahim Lafi’s death remain unclear. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, his death was the result of an Israeli bombardment. However, the Palestinian press freedom organisation MADA claims that he was shot by Israeli soldiers.

“Number 26”

Pursuing this line of inquiry raises the question of whether the two journalists may have been captured on Israeli territory. To investigate this possibility, the Israeli organisation HaMoked, which defends the rights of Palestinians under occupation, petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court two weeks after the disappearance of Nidal al-Wahidi and Haytham Abdel Wahed. Ten days later, on 31 October 2023, the authorities, compelled to respond, stated that they were not holding them. “We continued to send tracing requests to the army —  in December 2023, March 2024, August 2024 and January 2025 — to no avail. We have not been able to find them,” explains Daniel Shenhar, director of HaMoked’s legal department. The Israeli army's spokesperson service reiterated its statement to RSF on 26 February: the two reporters “are not being held by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces], and there is no indication that they were detained by the IDF.”

However, one particular photo makes the hypothesis of an arrest more plausible. It concerns Nidal al-Wahidi alone. The image shows around twenty men stripped of their clothes lying in rows, with their hands and feet bound. Blindfolded and face down, their backs are marked with numbers daubed in black directly on their skin. In the foreground is someone marked “26.” Nidal al-Wahidi’s relatives recognise his build, haircut, the shape of an earlobe, and underwear identifiable by its blue-and-black striped pattern. “The image provided does not allow for any possibility of identification,” the Israeli army spokesperson service stated.