Israel’s justification for bombing a Khan Younis hospital in southern Gaza, claiming it targeted a Hamas camera, is false, according to an investigation by the news agency Reuters.
Israeli forces planned the August 25 attack on Nasser Hospital using drone footage that, a military official said, showed a Hamas camera that was the target of the strike. But a Reuters review of visual evidence and interviews with witnesses established that the camera in question actually belonged to the news agency and had long been used by one of its own journalists.
The “double-tap” attack killed 22 people, including five journalists – one of whom worked for media. Their deaths bring the number of journalists killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza to more than 200 since the genocidal war began nearly two years ago.
A day after the hospital strike, the army said troops had fired on a “suspicious” camera draped in cloth, claiming it was operated by Hamas. Drone footage later showed the device on a hospital stairwell, covered with a prayer rug belonging to Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri – who was killed in the strike – not Hamas, Reuters found.
At least 35 times since May, al-Masri had positioned his camera on the same stairwell to record live broadcasts distributed worldwide. He often used the rug to shield it from heat and dust.
“The claim that Hamas was filming Israeli forces from Nasser Hospital is false and fabricated,” said Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Gaza’s Government Media Office. “Israel is trying to cover up a full-fledged war crime against the hospital, its patients and medical staff.”
Reuters said it reviewed more than 100 videos and photos from the scene and interviewed more than two dozen people to reconstruct the events of the attack.
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