Reuters cameraman was filming at Gaza hospital when suddenly his live feed went dead

Warning: Graphic content

Deir al-Balah: The Israeli military says its double strike on a Gaza hospital that killed 20 people, including five journalists, targeted what it believed was a Hamas surveillance camera. But the first strike, fired from a tank, killed a Reuters cameraman who was filming a live television shot, while the second killed those who rushed to help.

A military spokesperson admitted to Reuters that the journalists killed in the “double-tap” attack on southern Gaza’s largest hospital were not a target of the strike, and were not suspected of being associated with militant groups, adding the army chief had ordered a further inquiry into how the decision to strike the hospital was made.

The findings of an initial inquiry into the attack offered no immediate explanation for why the Israeli military struck Nasser Hospital twice, and no evidence for Israel’s assertion that six of the dead were militants, including two who were identified by their employers as a health care worker at the hospital and an emergency services driver.

The military said the back-to-back strikes on southern Gaza’s largest hospital were ordered because soldiers believed militants were using a camera to observe Israeli forces. But its account appeared to contradict the sequence of events in Monday’s attack.

A senior Hamas official denied that Hamas was operating a camera at the hospital.

“If this claim was true, there are many means to neutralise this camera without targeting a health care facility with a tank shell,” Bassem Naim, a member of the group’s political bureau, told the Associated Press.

Questions raised about Israeli military’s account

An initial strike hit a top floor of one of the hospital’s buildings. At that moment, the Reuters live video feed, which cameraman Hussam al-Masri had been operating, suddenly shut down. Masri was killed in the attack.

Using its own camera equipment, Reuters has frequently broadcast a feed from Nasser Hospital during the Gaza war. For several weeks, the news agency had been delivering daily feeds from the hospital position that was hit. Hospital officials said a second person, who has not been identified, was also killed in the first strike.

Health workers, journalists and relatives of patients then rushed up an external staircase to reach the site of the first blast. Photos taken from below showed at least 16 people gathered on the staircase, trying to help those hit. Among them were four men wearing the orange vests of emergency responders or health workers. No one on the staircase was seen holding weapons.

Video footage taken by Al-Ghad TV shows the second strike hitting, causing a large boom and engulfing everyone on the staircase in smoke. Hospital officials say 18 people were killed in the second strike.

Known as “double taps”, such consecutive strikes have drawn condemnation in wars in Ukraine and Syria, particularly when they hit civilians or medical workers racing to help.

Besides Masri, who had worked on contract for Reuters for the past year, the journalists killed included freelance photographer Mariam Abu Dagga, who worked for the Associated Press and other outlets, Mohammed Salama, from broadcaster Al-Jazeera, Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist who worked with organisations including occasionally Reuters, and Ahmed Abu Aziz, a journalist for Middle East Eye.

Photographer Hatem Khaled, also a Reuters contractor, was wounded.

The military did not elaborate on why it struck a second time or how it would have identified militants among the crowd on the staircase. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the attack a “tragic mishap”.

Without offering evidence, Israel has in the past identified emergency responders that work under the Hamas-run government as militants to be targeted, including in the killing of 15 medics in March, when Israeli troops opened fire on ambulances in southern Gaza.

The military’s chief of general staff acknowledged several “gaps” in the investigation so far, including the kind of ammunition used to take out the camera.

Rights groups condemn ‘double tap’ attack on hospital

The initial findings emerged on Tuesday as a surge of outrage and unanswered questions mounted and international leaders and rights groups condemned the strikes.

“The killing of journalists in Gaza should shock the world,” United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan said. “Not into stunned silence but into action, demanding accountability and justice.”

The Israel-Hamas war has been one of the bloodiest conflicts for media workers, with 189 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire in Gaza in 22 months of fighting, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

A military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines said both of the strikes that hit the hospital were launched from a tank.

International law prohibits attacks on hospitals. A hospital can lose that protection if it’s used for military purposes, but strikes must be proportionate, with measures taken to spare civilians.

Israel has attacked hospitals multiple times throughout 22 months of war in Gaza, asserting that Hamas embeds itself in and around the facilities, though Israeli officials rarely provide evidence to support that claim.

Protests in Israel as Netanyahu weighs Gaza City offensive

Earlier this week, protesters in Israel set tyres ablaze, blocked highways and clamoured for a ceasefire that would free hostages still in Gaza, even as Israeli leaders moved forward with plans for an offensive into Gaza City that they argue is needed to defeat Hamas.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza braced for the expanded offensive against a backdrop of displacement, destruction and the famine that has gripped parts of the territory.

Netanyahu met with his security cabinet on Tuesday evening, Israeli time, but he revealed little of what transpired when he appeared later at an event in Jerusalem.

“It started in Gaza, and it will end in Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “We will not leave these monsters there. We will release all our hostages. We will ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”

Netanyahu has said Israel will launch its Gaza City offensive while simultaneously pursuing a ceasefire, though Israel has yet to send a negotiating team to discuss a proposal on the table. Netanyahu has said the offensive is the best way to weaken Hamas and return hostages, but hostage families and their supporters have pushed back.

Hamas took 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, in an attack that also killed about 1200 people and triggered the latest conflict. Most hostages have been released during previous ceasefires. Israel has managed to rescue only eight hostages alive. Fifty remain in Gaza, and Israeli officials believe about 20 are still alive.

Israeli strikes continue after hospital attack

A day after the hospital attack, at least 35 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip, the majority of them hit by Israeli strikes, officials from Nasser Hospital, Shifa Hospital and Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan Clinic reported.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that three more adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation, bringing the malnutrition-related death toll to 186 since late June, when the ministry started to count fatalities in that category. The toll includes 117 children since the start of the war.

Israel’s military offensive has killed 62,819 people according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which says around half were women and children. The count does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

AP, Reuters

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