Tomorrow an Arab-American meeting in Amman… to end the war in Gaza

In the aftermath of an explosion that caused serious damage to the Agence France-Presse headquarters in Gaza, the Israeli army, which incessantly bombs the Strip, confirmed yesterday (Friday) that it had carried out an attack “near” the headquarters of the agency, denying that it had targeted the building “in any way.”

An agency worker who inspected the site Friday morning said an explosive device appeared to have penetrated the technical employee’s room in the Gaza office, from east to west, on the top floor of the 11-story building, destroying a wall in the room and causing serious damage to two adjacent rooms. The explosion also damaged doors in other rooms on the floor and hit water tanks on the building’s roof.

In response to a question from Agence France-Presse, an Israeli army spokesperson said that its services “verified the information several times” and that the army “did not carry out any attacks against this building.”

In the evening, an army spokesperson said: “According to the information we currently have, it appears that there was an Israeli army raid near the building to eliminate an imminent threat.”

The spokeswoman continued: “It is very important to confirm that the building was not targeted in any way by the Israeli army, and we have no indication that any target was missed in this raid,” adding: “There is There was an Israeli army raid nearby that may have caused the debris.”, without going into detail.

Fabrice Ferris, president of the board of directors of Agence France-Presse, condemned “the bombing of the headquarters whose geographical location everyone knows”, adding that “the repercussions of this strike could have been catastrophic if the agency team had not had been evacuated from the city.”

A live 24-hour broadcast from the French agency’s camera from Gaza city showed that the strike occurred on Thursday, a few minutes before noon local time (10:00 GMT), and the agency said it was l The only international agency that broadcasts directly from Gaza City without interruption.

Photos taken yesterday (Friday) of the external facade of the building, which houses the top two floors of the AFP office in the western Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, near the port, showed a large gap at the AFP office level ‘agency.

None of the agency’s eight-person team in Gaza was in the office at the time of the attack.

The agency’s journalists moved from Gaza City to the south of the Strip on October 13, after an Israeli warning to civilians to evacuate the northern area, where Israel conducts extensive military operations and considers it the center of Hamas operations.

Asked yesterday (Friday) during a press conference in Tel Aviv about the attack, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed the need to protect journalists covering the war in Gaza. He also stressed that Israel must give “the utmost consideration to the protection of civilians, and this obviously includes journalists.” He said journalists do “exceptional work in the most dangerous circumstances” to convey what is happening to the world.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the incident, calling on authorities to publish information about what it described as an “attack”.

Judy Ginsburg, head of the New York-based committee, stressed that “journalists and media offices must be respected and protected.”

In turn, the International Federation of Journalists (Friday) underlined in a post on platform “X” that “targeting the media is a war crime”.

The union continued: “We condemn the attack and call for an immediate investigation,” attaching the post to a link to scenes of the incident captured by Agence France-Presse.

In May 2021, the Israeli army bombed a 13-story tower that housed the offices of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera and the American news agency Associated Press. At the time, Israel said it had intelligence information that made the bombing of the building “legitimate.”

On October 7, the Hamas movement launched an attack unprecedented in the history of Israel, resulting in the deaths of nearly 1,400 people, most of whom were civilians, who died on the first day of the attack, according to Israeli authorities. Since then, Israel has responded with devastating bombings of the Gaza Strip, where 9,227 people have been killed, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

Media coverage from the Gaza Strip is very difficult, due to the danger of displacement on the ground and disruptions in communications and the Internet.