The day after the explosion that severely damaged the AFP office in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army, which has been shelling the Palestinian territory for several weeks, claimed on Friday evening that it had carried out an attack “near” the agency’s office in this building ” “in any way” to have been targeted.
AFP is the only one of the three major international news agencies to have live video coverage in Gaza, and this was not interrupted despite the damage noted by an AFP employee on Friday.
When questioned by AFP, an Israeli army spokesman initially said that its services had “checked several times” and that there had been “no attack on the AFP building” in Gaza.
In the evening, a military spokesman contacted again by AFP said: “According to the information we currently have, it appears that there was an attack by the Israeli army near the building to eliminate an immediate threat.”
“It is very important to emphasize that the building was in no way attacked by the Israeli army and that we have no evidence that any target was missed in this attack,” the spokesman said, before adding without further details: “ There was an Israeli army attack nearby that may have resulted in debris.”
“The AFP strongly condemns this attack on its office in Gaza. Its location is known to everyone and has been recalled several times in recent days, precisely to prevent such an attack and to allow us to continue to bear witness on the spot in images. “The consequences of such a shooting would have been devastating if the AFP team on site had not evacuated the city,” said AFP boss Fabrice Fries.
Jodie Ginsberg, president of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, reiterated that “journalists and media outlets must be respected and protected.”
“Targeting the media is a war crime,” the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, calling for “an immediate investigation.”
According to an AFP employee who was able to visit the site on Friday morning, an explosive projectile appeared to have penetrated horizontally from east to west into the engineer’s office on the top floor of the 11-story building, destroying the wall opposite the window and causing significant damage Damage in the two adjacent rooms.
The blast wave from the explosion damaged the doors of other rooms on the same level and penetrated the water tanks on the roof.
A big hole
According to live images from the AFP camera, which broadcast 24 hours a day from Gaza City, the strike took place a few minutes before noon local time (10:00 GMT) on Thursday.
According to images taken on Friday showing the exterior of the tower housing the AFP office, there is a gaping hole in the top two levels of the building in the west of Gaza’s Rimal district, near the port Facade can be seen at the technician’s office level.
None of the eight AFP personnel or permanent staff normally stationed in Gaza were on site at the time of the impact. All were evacuated to the south of the Gaza Strip on October 13 after the Israeli army issued an evacuation order for civilians living in the north of this area, which has been under the control of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.
In May 2021, during an earlier Gaza war between Hamas and Israel, the Israeli army pulverized the 13-story tower that housed the premises of the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera and the American agency Associated Press (AP). Israel then described the building as a “completely legitimate” target given the information available to the intelligence services.
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on civilians against Israel on October 7.
On the Israeli side, more than 1,400 people have been killed since October 7, according to Israeli authorities, the vast majority of them civilians who died in Hamas massacres on the first day of the war.
According to the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza, Israeli bombings in retaliation for Hamas’s “annihilation” have killed more than 9,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians.