The targeted symbol is very meaningful. A tower in Gaza City that housed international media offices was wiped out on Saturday, May 15, by a strike announced a few minutes earlier by the Israeli army, while rocket fire towards the Tel Aviv area resumed , killing an Israeli.
The thirteen-story building targeted by the Israeli air force, which had just been evacuated, in particular by teams from the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera and the American news agency Associated Press (AP), s’ is collapsed.
Israel just bombed Al-Jalaa Building in #Gaza which is mostly media offices, on live television with the Israeli of… https://t.co/zEtjJAmIul
“We have been running down the stairs since the 11e upstairs and now look at the building from afar, praying that the army will eventually retract ”, had tweeted shortly before the raid, Fares Akram, correspondent for AP in Gaza.
And now bombs could fall on our office. We ran down the stairs from the 11th floor and now looking at the building… https://t.co/IahbG5Zbgy
The Israeli air force had already destroyed, Thursday, a tower of more than ten floors housing the offices of the Palestinian channel Al-Aqsa, created a few years ago by Hamas.
“It is a terrible, very sad thing to target the Al-Jazeera office and the press offices”, said Wael Al-Dahdouh, head of the office of the Qatari channel there. The AP agency said “Shocked and horrified”.
In a statement, Israeli forces confirmed the strike on the building, which they said housed “Entities belonging to the military intelligence of the terrorist organization Hamas” and accused the Islamist organization of “Deliberately installing military targets in overcrowded areas”, using, again according to the Israeli army, civilians like “Human shields”.
Palestinian family decimated
Despite intensified diplomatic efforts to end six days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, nearly 300 rockets were again launched overnight from Friday to Saturday from Gaza into Israel. , according to the Israeli army, which continued its raids, some deadly, on several sites in the coastal enclave under blockade.
Ten Palestinians, including two women and eight children, members of the same family, were killed at dawn in one of these strikes on the Al-Shati refugee camp, located in the capital of the enclave, where two million Palestinians live under Israeli blockade.
Hamas, which had already fired around 300 rockets overnight, according to the IDF, responded to the raid in the morning by firing a round of rockets at central Israel, in revenge for the strike. “Against women and children”. A 50-year-old Israeli man, driving his car, was killed by one of the shootings on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israeli police and rescue services reported.
While the surge in violence between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza shows no sign of abating after six days of conflict, the latest Palestinian authorities’ death toll shows 139 dead, including 39 children, and 1,000 injured in the Israeli bombardments on the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli military operation, the largest since the 2014 war with the Islamist movement in Gaza, began on Monday, in response to a barrage of Hamas rockets on Israel, fired in “Solidarity” with the Palestinian uprising on the Esplanade des Mosques in East Jerusalem.
Since then, more than 2,300 rockets have been launched into Israeli territory, killing ten people, including a child and a soldier, and injuring more than 560. According to the military, the Iron Dome missile shield in intercepted more than half.