Smoke is visible over Gaza on Sep. 3, 2025. (Credit: Jack Guez/AFP)
The American news agency Associated Press (AP) on Friday challenged the arguments put forward by the Israeli army to justify strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five Palestinian journalists, including an AP contributor, at the end of August.
On Aug. 25, 22 people, including five journalists, were killed in Israeli strikes on a building of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to authorities in the Gaza Strip.
Reporting the next day on an “initial investigation” carried out by its forces, the Israeli army said the strikes had been conducted to “eliminate [a] threat” after detecting “a camera placed by Hamas” (the Palestinian Islamist movement that took power in Gaza in 2007) “to observe the activity of [its] troops” with the aim of attacking them. But in a dispatch published Friday, AP wrote that the results of its own investigations “seriously call into question” the Israeli army’s version, which has been at war with Hamas in Gaza since the bloody assault launched by the latter against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. AP recalled at the outset that the top of the building struck by the Israeli army is “a known location” used by journalists, notably to conduct live video feeds.
According to witnesses, the site is “frequently” flown over by drones and this was the case “about 40 minutes before the attack,” the article adds. The agency cites an Israeli military official who told it on condition of anonymity that the army came to believe that a camera on the hospital roof was being used by Hamas because the camera and its operator were covered with a towel, which was deemed “suspicious.”
‘Troubling decisions’
In reality, it was a journalist working with the British-Canadian agency Reuters, Hossam al-Masri, who regularly worked from the hospital roof and who should have been easily identified as such by the drone that flew over before the first strike, which killed him, AP wrote, noting it had found no evidence of any other camera at the site that day. The agency also noted that covering a camera with a cloth or fabric to protect it from the elements is a widespread practice among photojournalists.
AP said it uncovered “other troubling decisions” by Israel. “Shortly after the first strike, Israeli forces struck the same position again, after rescuers [and] journalists had rushed to the scene to cover the event,” the agency wrote, adding that it had discovered that Israel in total struck the hospital “four times” with “high-explosive tank shells,” and without any warning.
The agency noted that this exposes Israel to accusations of “double-tap strikes,” a condemned practice aimed at causing maximum casualties and potentially constituting a war crime. Mariam Dagga, an independent photojournalist collaborating with AP, was killed in these secondary strikes.
Asked by AFP about this article, the Israeli army referred to its Aug. 26 statement. That announcement said that the chief of staff had “ordered a review of several shortcomings,” including “the decision-making process on the ground” and “the weapons used for the strike.”
The American news agency Associated Press (AP) on Friday challenged the arguments put forward by the Israeli army to justify strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five Palestinian journalists, including an AP contributor, at the end of August. On Aug. 25, 22 people, including five journalists, were killed in Israeli strikes on a building of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to authorities in the Gaza Strip. Read also Through Katz's remarks, Israel acknowledges, boasts of its own war crimes: Islamic Jihad Reporting the next day on an “initial investigation” carried out by its forces, the Israeli army said the strikes had been conducted to “eliminate [a] threat” after detecting “a camera placed by Hamas” (the Palestinian Islamist movement that took power in Gaza in 2007) “to...
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