Reuters and AP journalists killed in Gaza hospital strike weren’t ‘a target,’ says IDF spokesman
Two journalists for Reuters and the Associated Press who were killed in an Israeli attack on a Gaza hospital were not “a target of the strike,” a military spokesperson tells Reuters, adding the army chief had ordered a further inquiry into how the decision to strike the hospital was made.
Israeli forces struck Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 20 people including journalists who worked for Reuters, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other outlets.
“We can confirm that the Reuters and AP journalists were not a target of the strike,” military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani tells Reuters. Three other journalists were also killed in the strike.
Using its own camera equipment, Reuters has frequently broadcast a feed from Nasser hospital during the Gaza war. For the past several weeks the news agency had been delivering daily feeds from the hospital position that was hit.
At the moment of the initial Israeli strike on Monday, the Reuters live video feed, which cameraman Hussam al-Masri had been operating, suddenly shut down. Masri was killed in the attack.
None of the five journalists were among the six alleged Palestinian terror operatives that the Israeli military named in a written statement, released on Tuesday. The statement included photos of six individuals who were killed, including alleged members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“At the same time, the chief of the general staff regrets any harm caused to civilians,” the statement says, adding that the Israeli military directs its activities solely toward military targets.
The written Israeli military statement identifies what it calls “several gaps” that Israel’s chief of the general staff had instructed be further examined:
“Firstly, a further examination of the authorization process prior to the strike, including the ammunition approved for the strike and the timing of the authorization.
“Secondly, an examination of the decision-making process in the field.”
Hamas meanwhile slams an Israeli statement saying the strike was aimed at a camera operated by the terrorist group, claiming the accusation is “baseless.”
Israel “attempted to justify this crime by fabricating a false claim that it had targeted a ‘camera’ belonging to resistance elements — an allegation that is baseless, lacking any evidence, and merely aimed at evading legal and moral responsibility for a full-fledged massacre,” Hamas says in a statement.
Hamas also denies that any of the Palestinians killed in the attack were terror operatives. Its government media office says in a statement that one of the six Palestinians who Israel identified as terrorists was killed in al-Mawasi some distance from the hospital, and another was killed elsewhere at a different time.
The Hamas statement doesn’t clarify whether the two who were killed elsewhere were also civilians.
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