(Paris) Agence France-Presse asked Israel for “a thorough and transparent investigation into the exact responsibility of its army”, after the strike which seriously damaged its office in Gaza City on Thursday, which had been shelled for weeks, she announced in a press release on Saturday.
AFP “took note of the latest statements from an Israeli army spokesperson referring to “an IDF strike near (the AFP office) which could have caused debris”.
However, “these statements alone do not allow at this stage to explain the extent of the damage caused to the AFP office”, located at the top of an eleven-story building, the agency said.
“A strike against the office of an international news agency sends a worrying message to all journalists working in conditions as difficult as those prevailing today in Gaza,” said AFP CEO Fabrice Fries, quoted in the press release.
“It is essential that every effort is made to protect the media in Gaza,” he added.
According to the NGO Reporters Without Borders, which referred the matter to the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed against Palestinian journalists in Gaza, more than thirty journalists have been killed there since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The AFP, one of the few international media to have an office there, employs a total of nine people in the Gaza territory and “redoubles its efforts to enable the evacuation of those of its employees and members of their families who wish to leave the territory.
The AFP video transmission, which transmitted live images to Gaza City, has been temporarily interrupted since Saturday, for reasons independent of the AFP.
According to an AFP collaborator who was able to go to the site, an explosive projectile appears to have entered from east to west, horizontally, into the technician’s office located on the top floor of the eleven-story building, destroying the wall opposite the window and causing significant damage in the two adjacent rooms.
“According to the information currently in our possession, it appears that there was an IDF strike near the building to eliminate an imminent threat,” an IDF spokeswoman said on Friday evening. Israeli army interviewed by AFP.
“It is very important to emphasize that the building was in no way targeted by the IDF and that we have no indication that a target was missed in this strike,” the spokesperson said, before adding, without further details: “There was an IDF strike nearby which may have caused debris.”
Questioned by AFP following this strike, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting Tel Aviv, said on Friday that journalists covering the war in the Gaza Strip must be “protected”.
Mr. Blinken praised these journalists “who are doing extraordinary work in the most dangerous conditions to tell the story to the world […]it’s something that we deeply admire, deeply respect and we want to make sure that they are protected.”
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its part, condemned in a press release on Friday “the attacks against United Nations sites and humanitarian personnel […] as well as against the media headquarters.
Israel declared a war to “wipe out” Hamas, relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the unprecedented bloody attack by Hamas commandos on October 7 in southern Israel.
According to the Hamas government, 9,488 people, mainly civilians including 3,900 children, have been killed since October 7 by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip.
In Israel, at least 1,400 people have been killed according to the authorities since the start of the war, the majority of them civilians massacred on the day of the Hamas attack, of a violence and scale unprecedented since the creation of Israel. in 1948.