The Israeli military attack Saturday on a Gaza Strip high-rise housing the offices of media outlets including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera prompted international outrage and condemnation from media freedom advocates.
The airstrike obliterated a 12-story building, which also contained numerous residential apartments. Journalists and other tenants had evacuated after receiving a warning an hour before the missiles struck, and no casualties have been reported.
The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded a “detailed and documented justification” for the airstrike, noting that it could represent a violation of international law.
“This latest attack on a building long known by Israel to house international media raises the specter that the Israel Defense Forces is deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza,” Joel Simon, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement.
“Knowingly causing the destruction of the offices of some of the world’s largest and most influential news organization raises deeply worrying questions about Israel’s willingness to interfere with the freedom of the press to operate,” the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem said in a Saturday statement. “At a time when Israel’s border crossing with Gaza is closed, those companies with a bureau in Gaza are more important than ever in reporting events to the world.”
The attack took place one day after Israel’s military was accused of misleading foreign journalists by announcing it had launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, then retracting that claim an hour later. While a spokesperson blamed internal confusion, Israeli media outlets have suggested that officials were deliberately spreading misinformation that would encourage Hamas militants to position themselves where they would be vulnerable to airstrikes.
In the wake of Saturday’s airstrikes, some observers pointed out that the Associated Press was one of the few international news outlets that responded to the announcement with skepticism and did not report that a ground invasion had begun.
The Associated Press said that a dozen of the newswire’s journalists and freelancers were inside the building when they received a warning that it would be hit. All managed to evacuate, narrowly averting a catastrophe.
“We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there,” the AP’s president and chief executive, Gary Pruitt, said in a statement.
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