According to report reaching oyogist.com, the violence between Israelis and Palestinians intensified Saturday as an Israeli airstrike destroyed a large high-rise building in Gaza City that housed the offices of the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. Israeli officials ordered the evacuation of the 12-story building, which also housed other media outlets, offices, and homes, about an hour before the strike that collapsed the structure into a pile of rubble. “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,” AP’s CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “This is an incredibly disturbing development.” There were a dozen AP journalists and freelancers inside the building before the attack but they were able to evacuate in time. “The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” Pruitt added.
Al Jazeera broadcast the airstrike live and showed the building collapsing. “This channel will not be silenced. Al-Jazeera will not be silenced,” the network’s anchor said on-air. Al-Jazeera journalist Safwat al-Kahlout said a resident of the building received a call warning of the attack around an hour before the airstrike. He and his colleagues started gathering as much equipment as possible before evacuating the building. “Now, one can understand the feeling of the people whose homes have been destroyed by such kind of air attacks,” al-Kahlout said. “It’s really difficult to wake up one day and then you realize that your office is not there with all the career experiences, memories that you’ve had.”
The Israel Defense Forces claimed the building also had military assets that were part of Hamas and emphasized it had given civilians plenty of time to evacuate. “Prior to the strike, the IDF provided advance warning to civilians in the building and allowed sufficient time for them to evacuate the site,” the IDF statement said. “Hamas deliberately places military targets at the heart of densely populated civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.” Al-Jazeera aired a video showing the owner of the building pleading with an Israeli officer to hold off the airstrike for a few minutes to allow journalists to collect their gear. The officer refused.
