Episode: 46 · Guest: Jawhar Ali · Full Episode #46
In 2015, a bombing struck the city of Derna in eastern Libya on a day that became known locally as Black Monday. Jawhar Ali, a journalist from Derna, was among those who ran toward the site of the explosion.
He arrived to find the immediate aftermath: bodies, debris, the disorder of a civilian area hit without warning. Derna had been a target of multiple armed factions throughout the post-2011 period — caught between the forces of Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, local militant groups, and shifting tribal alliances. The city's residents lived under siege conditions for extended periods.
Jawhar began filming. While he was at the bombing site, a second strike hit. He was caught in the blast. He continued filming.
The decision to run toward an explosion is, in Jawhar's account, not heroic. It is professional reflex — the instinct of a journalist who understood that if he did not document what had happened, no one would. Derna in 2015 was not a city where international correspondents were present. It was not a place where CNN cameras were set up on rooftops. The documentation fell to local journalists, working without institutional support, without protective equipment, and without the distance that foreign correspondents maintain between themselves and the story.
The second strike — hitting while Jawhar was already at the scene — illustrates the specific danger of documenting conflict in real time. The first explosion draws people in: rescue workers, bystanders, journalists. The second is designed to hit those who responded. It is a tactic documented across multiple conflict zones. Jawhar survived it, and his footage survived with him.