An Israeli attack on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, has drawn worldwide condemnation.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli explosive drone hit a building at Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, followed by an air strike as the wounded were being evacuated.
Several news organisations confirmed that their contributors were among the journalists killed in the strike, which came just days after the UN declared a famine in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
Saudi Arabia denounced the attack at the hospital. It called on the international community to ‘put an end to these Israeli crimes’ and stressed the need to ensure protection for medical, relief and media workers.
Condemning the attack, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said civilians, including medical personnel and journalists, must be respected and protected at all times.
He called for a prompt, impartial investigation into the killings.
“While people in #Gaza are being starved, their already limited access to health care is being further crippled by repeated attacks,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
“We cannot say it loudly enough: STOP attacks on health care. Ceasefire now!”
He said 50 people had also been wounded in the strikes, including critically ill patients who had already been receiving care.
US President Donald Trump said he was not happy about it when asked for a reaction.
“When did this happen?” he asked a reporter in the White House. “I didn’t know that. Well, I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to see it. At the same time, we have to end that whole nightmare.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said the attack was intolerable while British foreign minister David Lammy said he was horrified.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian presidency urged the international community, particularly the Security Council and the United Nations, to provide protection for journalists and hold Israel accountable.
The US State Department referred questions on the strike to the Israeli government.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said the strikes represented ‘an open war against free media, with the aim of terrorising journalists and preventing them from fulfilling their professional duty of exposing its crimes to the world’.
The syndicate said more than 240 Palestinian journalists had been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since the war started on October 7, 2023.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, which put the number of journalists and media workers killed since the war began at 197 including 189 Palestinians in Gaza, called for ‘the international community to hold Israel accountable for its continued unlawful attacks on the Press’.
The five journalists worked for Reuters, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and others.
Cameraman Hussam Al Masri, a Reuters contractor, was killed near a live broadcasting position operated by Reuters on an upper floor just below the roof of the hospital in Khan Younis in an initial strike, Palestinian health officials said.
Officials at the hospital and witnesses said Israel then struck the site a second time, killing other journalists as well as rescue workers and medics who had rushed to the scene to help.
The journalists killed included Mariam Abu Dagga, who freelanced for the Associated Press and other outlets, Mohammed Salama, who worked for Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist who worked with several news organisations including occasionally contributing to Reuters, and Ahmed Abu Aziz from Middle East Eye.
Photographer Hatem Khaled, also a Reuters contractor, was wounded.
Israel’s military, the Israel Defence Forces, acknowledged striking the area of Nasser Hospital and said the chief of the general staff had ordered an inquiry.
The IDF “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such. The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops,” it said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel deeply regretted what he described as the ‘tragic mishap’.
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