After an Israeli air attack on Gaza destroyed the building housing Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, the Qatar-based broadcaster said Saturday that it would not be silenced.
“It is clear that those fighting this war seek to discredit media that are seeing, filming, and broadcasting the facts about what is happening in Gaza,” Walid al-Omari, Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief, said.
“But this is impossible”, he said on air shortly after Gaza’s 13-story Jala Tower was destroyed.
‘This is only one of the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.’
After the Israeli air attack, Al Jazeera showed video of the structure falling to the ground, throwing up a massive mushroom cloud of dust and rubble.
The owner of the Jala Tower, Jawad Mehdi, said an Israeli intelligence officer told him he only had one hour to ensure the building’s evacuation.
Safwat al-Kahlout, an Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza, expressed his dismay at the damage on Twitter.
”I have been working here for 11 years. I have covered many events from this building… now everything, in two seconds, just vanished,” he said.
Israel said that its “fighter jets targeted a high-rise building that housed military equipment belonging to the Hamas terror organization’s military intelligence.”
“The building also housed offices of civilian media organisations, which Hamas hides behind and uses as human shields,” the report said.
Since Monday, Israeli air and artillery strikes on Gaza have killed 139 people, including 39 children, and injured 1,000 others, according to health officials in the coastal enclave.
