WEB DESK – An Israeli air strike targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets hours after another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children.
The owner of the building had been warned on Saturday in advance by the Israeli military of an impending missile strike.
The building also contained a number of apartments and other offices.
The strike brought the entire 12-story building down, collapsing with a gigantic cloud of dust.
Israel “destroyed Jala Tower in the Gaza Strip, which contains the Al Jazeera office and other international press offices,” Al Jazeera said in a tweet, with an AP journalist saying the army had warned the tower’s owner ahead of the strike.
Al Jazeera also broadcast the air strikes live as the building collapsed.
“The aim of this heinous crime is to silence the media and to hide the untold carnage and suffering of the people of Gaza,” Mostefa Souag, acting director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, said.
Al Jazeera’s Gaza-based journalist Khaled Lubbad told TRT World’s Nizar Sadawi that Israel gave journalists just a few minutes as they abandoned their “memories and equipment” before Israeli army reduced the entire building into mangled heap of concrete, glass and iron
Israeli military spokesperson confirmed it struck media building in Gaza, claiming it contained “Hamas military intelligence”.
Source TRT
