The Israeli army struck today at a nearly ten-storey building in the Gaza Strip, where the premises of Qatar’s Al Jazeera television and the American news agency Associated Press are located, AFP journalists stated.
“An Israeli strike has devastated the tower where the AP’s Gaza offices are located,” US journalist John Gambrle wrote on Twitter.
“The army warned the owner of the tower, where the AP’s premises are, that it would become a target,” he had written shortly before.
AFP reporters saw rockets destroy the 13-story tower.
Al Jazeera confirmed on Twitter that its premises were in this building, and retransmitted footage showing the tower collapsing into a cloud of dust.
The Israeli army did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
“Bombs could have fallen on our office. We were running down the stairs from the 11th floor and now we are looking at the building from afar, praying for the army to finally withdraw,” Fares Akram, an AP correspondent in Gaza, wrote shortly before the attack.
The Islamist movement Hamas, which rules in Gaza, and Israel have been exchanging deadly shelling from and to the Palestinian enclave since Monday. According to the latest data of the Palestinian Authority, last night the Israeli bombings took 139 victims, including 39 children, and 1000 people were injured.
More than 2,300 rockets have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants since Monday, killing nine people, including a child and a soldier, and injuring more than 560.
According to the Israeli army, the Iron Dome missile shield has intercepted more than half of these missiles.
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