An Al Jazeera correspondent has returned to work just days after his entire immediate family were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Wael al-Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in the strike late on Tuesday. They had moved to a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza following Israel’s warning on 13 October. Dahdouh said that as Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza he believed it was his duty to return to work as soon as possible. “I felt that it was my duty, despite the pain and the open wound, to get back in front of the camera, and to communicate with you on social media as soon as possible. “As you can see, the firing is ongoing everywhere. There are airstrikes and artillery shelling, and things continue to develop.” The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claimed the same airstrike killed a further 21 people. Dahdouh was helping broadcast live images of the besieged territory’s night sky when he received the news that his family members had died. Moments later, the satellite channel switched to footage of Dahdouh entering Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah before being overcome by grief as he saw his dead son in the hospital’s morgue. “They take revenge on us in our children?” he said, kneeling over his son’s bloodied body, still wearing his protective press vest from that day’s work. Speaking to Al Jazeera on his way out of the hospital, Dahdouh said: “What happened is clear. This is a series of targeted attacks on children, women and civilians. I was just reporting from Yarmouk about such an attack, and the Israeli raids have targeted many areas, including Nuseirat. “We had our doubts that the Israeli occupation would not let these people go without punishing them. And sadly, that is what happened. This is the ‘safe’ area that the occupation army spoke of.” The 53-year-old journalist is revered in his native Gaza for telling people’s stories of suffering and hardship to the outside world through many wars. On Friday evening, the heaviest day of bombing during the Israel-Hamas war so far, the Israel Defence Forces said their air and ground forces were stepping up their operations in Gaza. The IDF has since said that 150 underground Hamas targets were struck by about 100 jets overnight, while internet and mobile services had been almost entirely cut off since Friday evening.