Independent Arabia journalist Maryam Abu Daqqa captured the damaged stairwell of a Gaza Strip hospital in her final photographs, moments before she was killed there by an Israeli strike.
Ms Abu Daqqa, who also freelanced for The Associated Press, was among 22 people, including five reporters, killed on Monday when Israeli forces struck Nasser Hospital twice in quick succession.
Her camera, retrieved on Wednesday, contained photos depicting people ascending the staircase after the initial damage, while others watched from the windows of the main health facility in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military said it targeted what it believed to be a Hamas surveillance camera.
However, witnesses and health officials reported that the first strike killed a Reuters news agency cameraman conducting a live television shot, alongside a second unnamed individual.
A senior Hamas official denied the group was operating a camera at the hospital.
Ms Abu Daqqa, 33, and other journalists regularly based themselves at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis during the war.
Her work focused on documenting the experiences of ordinary Palestinians displaced from their homes and the efforts of doctors treating wounded or malnourished children.
Algeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, his voice breaking and on the verge of tears, read a letter on Wednesday to the UN Security Council that Ms Abu Daqqa wrote days before she was killed.
It was addressed to her 13-year-old son, Gaith, who left Gaza at the start of the war to live with his father in the United Arab Emirates.
Holding up a photo of Ms Abu Daqqa, Amar Bendjama called her “a young and beautiful mother” whose only weapon was a camera.
“Ghaith. You are the heart and soul of your mother,” Mr Bendjama quoted Dagga as writing.
“When I die, I want you to pray for me, not to cry for me.
“I want you never, never to forget me. I did everything to keep you happy and safe and when you grow, when you marry, and when you have a daughter, name her Maryam after me.”
Ms Abu Daqqa’s colleague at Independent Arabia, Ezz Al Din Abu Eisha, has remembered the photojournalist as “a warrior with a camera”.
“She lived the war, moving between destroyed homes, overcrowded hospitals, and displacement camps, documenting what Israel did not want to be documented.
“She saw herself as the world’s eye, witnessing the war in Gaza.”
