Israel’s bombs raze Al Jazeera
Journalists get one hour to flee before devastating air attack ...AS HAMAS ROCKETS STRIKE TERROR INTO TEL AVIV BEACHGOERS
ISRAEL was roundly condemned last night for bombing a building being used by the Arab TV network Al Jazeera and other major international media organisations.
The 13-storey Al-Jala Tower, which is in the heart of Gaza city, was obliterated in a terrifying air strike after the Israeli military gave the building’s owner just one hour’s notice to evacuate everyone. Dramatic pictures captured the moment laser-guided bombs slammed into the building. Seconds later it collapsed in a billowing cloud of smoke.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) later claimed Palestinian Hamas militants were using the tower block as a base, with journalists as human shields. As well as Al Jazeera, the building also housed American news agency the Associated Press (AP) and France’s Agence France Press (AFP).
The bombing provoked an international outcry and prompted the White House to tell Israel that it had a ‘paramount responsibility’ to ensure the media’s safety.
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden that Israel was ‘doing everything to avoid harming’ those not involved in the conflict.
Meanwhile during a sixth consecutive day of fierce fighting, Tel Aviv residents fled amid wailing sirens as Hamas militants fired barrages of rockets at Israel’s second most populous city.
Beachgoers were seen running to shelter. One rocket hit a residential block in a nearby suburb, killing a 50-year-old man, medics said.
Hours earlier, an Israeli airstrike on the al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza killed at least eight children and two adults in the deadliest single strike of the latest conflict.
In the worst violence since 2014 to erupt between Israel and Hamas, 139 Palestinians, including 39 children, have been killed, while ten Israelis have lost their lives, two of them children.