Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital
Five people have been killed in an Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, according to the Anglican Church, which operates it.The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem said three journalists, a father escorting his son to surgery, and another person died on Thursday morning when the hospital's compound was hit.It condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the attack, which also injured 30 bystanders, including four hospital staff. The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate accused Israel of a "full-fledged war crime".The Israeli military said it "precisely struck" a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighter operating from a command centre inside the hospital's yard.
It came on the same day as more than 130 global news and press freedom organisations - including the BBC - called for international media to be given immediate access to Gaza and Palestinian journalists to be given full protection."For 20 months, the Israeli authorities have refused to grant journalists outside of Gaza independent access to the Palestinian territory - a situation that is without precedent in modern warfare," they wrote in a letter co-ordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders."Local journalists, those best positioned to tell the truth, face displacement and starvation. To date, nearly 200 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military. Many more have been injured and face constant threats to their lives for doing their jobs: bearing witness. This is a direct attack on press freedom and the right to information."There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or government. But they have previously denied that Israeli forces have targeted journalists.
The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate said the Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital's compound directly targeted a media tent.Video footage showed medics and other people rushing to help casualties lying on the ground underneath a tree in a yard and carrying at least four of them into a medical tent."The Israeli drone suddenly attacked these colleagues," Palestinian journalist Mohammed Ahmed told Reuters news agency at the scene. "Three of them [were] martyred, in addition to a number of martyrs among passersby.""The Israeli occupation forces are increasing their attacks on us as journalists, trying to prevent us from doing our work," he alleged.The journalists' syndicate identified the three dead journalists as Ismail Badah, a cameraman for the PIJ-affiliated Palestine Today TV channel, Soliman Hajaj, a Palestine Today editor, and Samir al-Refai of the Shams News network.Another four journalists were injured, two of whom - Palestine Today correspondent Imad Daloul and Ahmed Qalja, a cameraman for Qatar-based Al-Araby TV - were in a critical condition, it said.The Israeli military said in a statement that it "precisely struck an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was operating in a command-and-control centre" in the yard of the hospital. It did not name the target or provide any evidence.The military also accused armed groups of using al-Ahli for "terrorist activity" and "cynically and brutally using the civilian population" inside - an allegation they have denied.In April, staff at al-Ahli hospital said an Israeli strike destroyed its laboratory and damaged its emergency room. They did not report any direct casualties, but said a child died due to disruption of care. The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas "command-and-control centre".Hospitals are specially protected under international humanitarian law. They only lose that protection in certain circumstances, including being used as a base from which to launch an attack, as a weapons depot, or to hide healthy fighters.
The Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 37 people across Gaza on Thursday. As well as Gaza City, local media reported deaths in Jabalia and Beit Lahia in the north, and in Khan Younis in the south.Also on Thursday, a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid group working in Gaza said it had reopened two of its distribution centres, a day after closing them for "renovation"."Over the past 24 hours, we have been fully focused on strengthening our distribution sites to ensure safe and more efficient delivery of life-saving aid to the people of Gaza," the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) interim executive director John Acree said in a statement.On Wednesday, the GHF announced that it was shutting all of its sites - three out of four of which had been operational - to make them "as safe as possible" following a string of deadly incidents nearby.Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in recent days while approaching one of the centres in Rafah on a route that runs through an Israeli military zone.Witnesses have said Israeli forces opened fire at crowds seeking aid.The Israeli military has denied that it fired at civilians within the centre, but it has said that troops fired at "suspects" who ignored warning shots and approached them.The GHF has denied that anyone was killed or injured at its centres.The group, which uses American private security contractors, aims to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians.The UN and other aid groups refuse to co-operate with the new system, saying it contravenes the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.They also warn that Gaza's 2.1 million population faces catastrophic levels of hunger after an almost three-month total Israeli blockade that was partially eased two weeks ago.The US and Israel say the GHF's system will prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.Separately, the Israeli military said it recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.At least 54,677 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
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Watching the TV coverage of the conflict in Gaza with increasing dismay this week, my mind went back to the banks of the Suez canal in October 1973. I was filming the surrender of the entire Egyptian third army with a team from the BBC, without significant censorship or hindrance. The Israeli commander, Gen Avraham Adan, paused in whatever he was doing to give us an update. Crossing the canal on the Israeli pontoon bridge in a bright yellow Hertz car (not a wise choice of colour) we were even helped when we had to repair a tyre that had been punctured by the shrapnel that littered the battlefield. Censorship? Yes, the report was censored by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) back at the satellite feed point in Herzliya. But the censorship was limited only to matters of operational security. This was obviously helpful to the journalists, but also to the Israelis themselves. They had independent verification, with video to back it, of their remarkable achievement in turning around their initial setbacks in Sinai. And they could show, through scenes with a biblical resonance, that the Egyptians' surrender was conducted humanely and in accordance with the Geneva conventions, the laws of war. As the great columns of the third army mounted a sand dune, they exchanged their weapons for bottles of water abundantly provided. Was it always this easy? Of course not. On another occasion, I rose early and reached a road block beyond Gaza only to be turned back, as all the press were that day, on the orders of southern command. But that was exceptional. The IDF operated a policy of relatively open access based on mutual advantage. Sometimes it would herd everyone into press buses, which was far from satisfactory. But it would regularly provide the major TV networks with an escort officer, armed and in uniform, to enable and supervise the coverage. One of my escorts in the Yom Kippur war was Topol, the actor from Fiddler on the Roof. He was something of a hero in Israel, and all roadblocks opened to him. On another occasion I was on my way to the Golan Heights, accompanied and with documents in order, when the great conductor and Israeli sympathiser Zubin Mehta asked for a lift. To my lasting regret I turned him down on the grounds that I had a press pass and he did not – I thought this may harm my chances of being allowed in. Nowhere that the IDF operated was off limits to us. We could film what we wanted and freely interview soldiers of all ranks. In the trenches of the Golan Heights, because of language difficulties, the other ranks tended to be South African immigrants. I was also free to make mistakes. In 1968, the year after the six-day war, I returned to Israel and interviewed the chief of staff, Gen Haim Bar-Lev, who was busy building the defensive line that bore his name. I travelled to Jerusalem and was stopped at a roadblock outside the biblical village of Emmaus. It stood at the centre of the Latrun salient, a Jordanian outpost in the previous war of 1948. The Israelis were busy dismantling it brick by brick. I was not allowed to film it and could only have reported it by leaving the country, not to return. Such compromises are commonplace, but I regret this one. The village disappeared, to be replaced by a Canadian peace park. I was also allowed, after 1967, to visit and stay in Gaza, and show the day-to-day reprisals by the IDF against Palestinians whom it held responsible for previous attacks. The same applied to the destruction of homes in the West Bank city of Qalqilya, and the sowing of landmines round the churches of St John the Baptist in the Jordan valley. All of this passed the IDF's censorship without difficulty. Fast forward to today, and the coverage – or rather, the non-coverage – of the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza. The broadcasts regularly start with the mantra that the IDF does not allow foreign media access into the Gaza Strip, and proceed with the most vivid coverage, shot by brave freelances and other civilians posting on social media from inside Gaza, of scenes of death and destruction with the commentary voiced remotely in Jerusalem, Ashkelon or London. Often, both print and broadcast media preface the numbers of the dead and injured with a reminder that they were provided by the Hamas-run health ministry – sometimes the only source available. My former colleague Jeremy Bowen said on the Today programme on Wednesday: 'Israel doesn't let us in because it's doing things there … that they don't want us to see, otherwise they would allow free reporting.' I'm inclined to agree with him. My sympathies are with Bowen, Fergal Keane and others at the BBC, especially when Donald Trump flings around baseless accusations of bias. The BBC and other responsible news outlets have a difficult line to tread. I cannot speak for the American networks, but the British channels all have excellent reporters standing by in the region, not exactly there but thereabouts, sometimes on the high ground overlooking Gaza, which some reporters call the 'hill of shame'. What is missing is the first-hand experience of the war, shared by reporters on the ground who can properly interpret what is happening. This gives free rein to rumour and falsehood. What Bowen and I know from our shared experience is that it is not enough to win the war of weapons without also winning the war of words and images. And the IDF must see that it is losing. It has historically had its ups and downs with the foreign press, but nothing like the present entrenched hostility. It is doing itself great damage, which it is beginning to feel diplomatically. I would urge the following: that the foreign press, especially the TV networks, continue to stand their ground, and that the Israeli press machine does itself a favour and relaxes the rules to allow some independent access to Gaza. This will not only limit the tides of propaganda (on both sides, it must be said) but perhaps hold the frontline troops to higher standards of behaviour, just as it did beside the Suez canal in 1973. It is important to both sides to reestablish at least the limited level of trust that used to exist between them. Here is an example. In the 1973 war, we were able transmit the news by satellite on the day that it happened. Our office was a chair beneath a palm tree near the feed point. In the 1967 war, the exposed news film was bundled into onion bags – blue for the BBC, red for NBC – and taken to the censor who stamped his approval on the masking tape around the neck, before it was air-freighted to London. But he had to take our word for what the film actually showed. The public had a more accurate account back then of events on the battlefield than it does today through the fog of war in Gaza. When access is denied, everyone loses. And, Israel, that includes you. Martin Bell is a Unicef UK ambassador. He is a former broadcast war reporter, and was the independent MP for Tatton from 1997 to 2001 Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
