Israel Falsely Warned It Would Bomb a Media Office. The Actual Airstrike Killed Journalists on a Nearby Street

The clock had not yet struck midnight on October 9, when Said Al-Taweel fell into a deep sleep in his office in al-Ghefari Tower, Gaza City’s tallest building. Alaa Abu Mohsen, Al-Taweel’s colleague, heard him snoring.

It was the early days of Israel’s war on Gaza, and Al-Taweel wasn’t getting much sleep. Neither, for that matter, was Abu Mohsen.

Al-Taweel, the 37-year-old editor-in-chief of Khamsa News Agency, had been more or less living in his high-rise office, working constantly, late into the night, to cover the Israeli onslaught.

More than an hour after Al-Taweel drifted off to sleep, sometime after 1 a.m., word began to spread that Haji Tower, another high-rise near the al-Ghefari building, was going to be attacked by the Israelis. Haji Tower is home to local and international media offices, including Agence France-Presse. The rush of people leaving the 12-story tower came after an Israeli military officer spoke by phone to at least four people to order the evacuation of Haji Tower, according to the accounts of two direct recipients of warnings as well as video of a call.

As people streaming from the building scrambled to get into their cars and flee, several of the journalists in the area instead drew nearer to Haji Tower. They wanted to get the story: An Israeli attack on a building known to house so many reporters would resonate internationally.

Abu Mohsen had by then drifted off to sleep himself and, when he awoke, he didn’t see Al-Taweel, he later recalled. He glanced at his phone. He had missed two calls from Al-Taweel. “I’ll see him downstairs,” Abu Mohsen thought to himself, resolving to go down to check things out at street level.

Though many Israeli attacks come unannounced, the military also sometimes issues warnings before striking buildings where civilians could be present. In the early hours of October 10, such a warning was issued, but what unfolded nonetheless proved tragic.

When the airstrike finally came, it did not hit al-Ghefari nor Haji Tower. Instead, it destroyed a third structure: a six-story residential building called Babel that lay directly on the road between the two towers. As Babel collapsed into rubble, at least nine people were killed, including three journalists who had moved into the building’s vicinity to report on Haji Tower from a safe distance.

“The bodies of the journalists flew into the air from the intensity of the bombing,” said Mansour Khalaf, the owner of Babel, who witnessed the attack from the street.

In a written statement, the Israeli military said that, on October 10, a “facility” used by a senior Hamas member was targeted “in the area in question.” It had issued “a warning to residents of the building and the area to evacuate,” the military spokesperson said. “Any claim that the IDF led people to evacuate to a strike zone is baseless and absurd.” The statement said that the case is being investigated.

Few hours before the strike, journalists working on the 16th floor of al Ghefari building

International humanitarian law encourages armed forces to provide advance warnings prior to an attack when circumstances permit, but the warnings must be “effective.” In the Babel building attack, the call contained false information.

The following minute-by-minute account of the airstrike — based on analysis of videos, audio recordings, and photographs from the attack and its aftermath — is part of the monthslong investigation by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. The investigation is being published in partnership with The Intercept as part of the Gaza Project, a collaboration of 50 journalists from 13 media organizations coordinated by Forbidden Stories to investigate attacks on journalists in Gaza.

ARIJ collected more than 25 interviews, including with family members of the deceased and nearly 20 eyewitnesses to the strike.

The resulting findings tell the intertwined story of three structures in Gaza City — two towers housing media offices and one squat apartment building — that shows how a purportedly cautionary series of phone conversations led three journalists to their deaths. They were among the journalists killed early in the war. The violence meted out by the Israeli assault has resulted in the deaths of 1 in every 10 journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Source: AFP

Said Al-Taweel’s world had dramatically changed in recent days. It had been more than two years since Israel’s last major assault on the Gaza Strip, and life in Rafah, where he lived, had settled into its normal patterns, albeit under an occupation and a constant, baseline siege.

Three days before the Gaza City airstrike, Al-Taweel had visited with relatives gifting them knafeh, a syrupy Palestinian pastry, which was shared with neighbors.

Fatima al Akar, Al-Taweel’s wife, thinks of knafeh as a dessert for happy occasions. In retrospect, she said, the sweet took on a different hue that day: “It was like he was saying goodbye.”

Said posts a video of the evacuation of Hijji's tower on his Facebook page

The next morning, al Akar and Al-Taweel woke up early and sent three of their children to school. Five-month-old Lujain stayed at home. Then a roar suddenly echoed across the sky.

“Oh God, the thunder,” al Akar recalled saying. Al-Taweel, she said, thought it sounded like rockets.

Unbeknownst to them, it was the start of Hamas and other militants’ attacks against Israeli border towns, resulting in the killing of more than 1,100 Israelis and taking over 200 hostages.

Once Al-Taweel learned what was going on, he expected Israel to strike back hard. He asked al Akar to pull the children from school and prepare a bag of clothing and documents, in case they needed to flee.

Al-Taweel himself had work to do. He headed 22 miles north to Gaza City, where Khamsa News is based. His wife urged him to return home. “Bokra, bokra, rasmy mrawah,” he told her on October 9. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, for sure I’m coming back home.”

Al-Taweel wasn’t alone. The journalists congregating in al-Ghefari Tower, in western Gaza, started work early. The central gathering place was in Palestinian Media Group’s offices on the 16th floor; it had a panoramic view of Gaza, according to Mohammed Skaik, a journalist at PMG.

Just down the street, a little over 300 meters away, was another hub of journalistic activity: Haji Tower, where AFP occupies the top two floors and Palestinian outlets like Al-Najah TV and Ain Media are also based.

Al-Taweel and his colleagues spent two days chronicling the war. On October 8, the Israeli barrage against Gaza had begun in earnest, with the military announcing that some 130 targets had been struck. Al-Taweel went about covering the onslaught, posting to his well-read Facebook page.

After the warning about Haji Tower from the Israeli military reached Al-Taweel, he put on a flak jacket and hurried toward the building. Skaik chose to remain in the office, aiming his camera at the tower awaiting the strike.

Al-Taweel alerted some colleagues of the evacuation order, including the journalists Mohammed Sobh and Hisham Nwajha of the Khabar Agency, so they could cover the bombing. They headed in the direction of Haji Tower along with Samer al Za’aneen, another journalist based in al-Ghefari Tower that night who said he went because an attack on an international news agency like AFP would be a big story.

At 2:12 a.m., on their way out of al-Ghefari Tower, Sobh and Nwajha took a selfie in the elevator, with Sobh’s tripod, camera, and huge lens in between them.

Sobh had been sleeping in the Khabar Agency’s office in al-Ghefari Tower since October 7, his wife, Hanadi Qarmout, said. She had grown accustomed to him staying at the office during Israel’s wars. On October 9, Sobh returned home to see his wife and their 9-year-old son.

The night of the bombing, Qarmout was getting increasingly worried about her husband. “Don’t go up on the roof, don’t go down,” she told him. “Take care of yourself.” He reassured her that he would take the photos from the office.

Siham Nadal, Nwajha’s wife, had begged him not to leave Rafah for Gaza City, mentioning their 3-year-old twins, Ilan and Rakan, to convince him to stay. He would not, however, be deterred.

On the night of the strike against Babel, Nwajha called Nadal.

“I love you very much,” he said. “I’m heading down to cover the bombing of the Haji Tower.”

Then he sent her a selfie, the last photo she received from him, and likely the last he ever took.

It’s unclear how many warning calls Israel issued on the night of the attack.

According to several eyewitnesses, sometime after 1 a.m., a local resident received a call from a man identifying himself as an Israeli officer. The caller said Haji Tower should be evacuated because it was about to be bombed.

Rushdi Adeeb, a resident of the Babel building, heard a commotion outside about this time and rushed downstairs to find a man talking with the Israeli officer on speakerphone. (It’s unclear whether the officer on the line was the same one who had spoken to the local resident; in these situations, phones are often passed around between people in attendance.) Adeeb said the officer was giving evacuation orders for Haji Tower — and that the officer acknowledged the target was occupied by some media offices.

Three people who heard the call confirmed to ARIJ and The Intercept that the officer specified Haji Tower as a target. One of the eyewitnesses heard it on speakerphone, and the other two heard it directly from the Israeli officer.

At 2:06 a.m., an elderly man held the phone with an Israeli officer at the other end of the line, then passed the phone to Manhal Sheheibar, a neighborhood resident and owner of a car sales company.

“Haji building? No, I don’t know anybody there,” Sheheibar says in a video of his conversation with the officer as recorded in a video obtained by ARIJ and The Intercept. Sheheibar then pauses and listens, and then blurts out a response: “What? In five minutes? Ten minutes, then, 10 minutes.”

Sheheibar said in a later interview that the speaker on the other end of the line was speaking in Arabic.

Mohammed Abu Safia, a journalist, also spoke to an Israeli officer — it’s unclear if it’s the same one — sometime after 2 a.m. Abu Safia had been asleep on the seventh floor of Haji Tower when he was aroused by screaming at street level. Abu Safia went down and found a man on a cellphone refusing to go into Haji Tower and warn people of an impending attack.

Abu Safia then took the phone from the man.

“Which tower do you want to bomb so we can evacuate it?” Abu Safia recalled telling the officer at the other end of the line. The officer, according to Abu Safia, said Haji Tower was targeted for bombing.

Abu Safia said, “I told him: ‘How much time do I have to check who is in the tower, who evacuated or not?’”

The officer said the beleaguered journalist had five minutes to evacuate and, like the man on the phone before him, Abu Safia refused to go into the tower under threat of attack. Abu Safia said, “I told him: ‘I want at least 15 to 20 minutes to go into the building, check it floor by floor, and evacuate myself. Stay with me on the line if you agree to this.’”

The officer then agreed, telling Abu Safia he had 20 minutes to evacuate the building.

With the officer still on the line, Abu Safia searched Haji Tower and found no one inside. The officer, according to Abu Safia, said he and others should evacuate to the beach.

Late on the evening of October 9, eight journalists were gathered in the office of Agence France-Presse in Haji Tower. Yahya Hassouna, a videographer at the agency, was busy editing footage when the building’s doorman arrived with urgent news: There had apparently been a call from the Israeli military to evacuate the building.

No one knew why the Haji Tower would be targeted. “We were all in shock,” Hassouna said. “What was the reason?”

It was nearly 2 a.m. when AFP journalist Adel Zaanoun called Jerusalem bureau chief Marc Jourdier. “Don’t waste a minute and evacuate,” Jourdier recalled telling Hassouna. “I’m calling the army and getting back to you ASAP.” After a quick call, Jourdier sent Haji Tower’s coordinates to the Israeli military on WhatsApp at 2:03 a.m.

Inside the AFP’s Haji Tower office, staff gathered cameras, tripods, press vests, and helmets. Within a few minutes, they made their way out of the building. “We know that when the Israeli army threatens a tower, it will be bombed, whether after 15 minutes, an hour or 30 minutes,” Hassouna said. “We’ve learnt that through our coverage of wars.”

As the journalists were leaving the building, Jourdier received a response from an Israeli military official: “We’re checking to see what we can do. But right now I recommend you to follow the instructions you got.”

The AFP journalists headed towards al-Ghefari Tower, except for Hassouna, who chose to stay closer to Haji Tower for clearer pictures of the expected strike. He stood near Al-Taweel, Sobh, and Nwajha, whom he recognized as fellow journalists but did not personally know.

“They thought they were in a safe place,” said Hassouna.

Video footage shows Sobh and Nwajha walking between al-Ghefari Tower and Babel, passing by as another journalist recounts an evacuation call.

At 2:19 am, Al-Taweel posted a video to his Facebook page. “The evacuation of Haji building after getting warnings that it will be bombed,” he wrote. “The whole area was evacuated in preparation for the strike on Haji Tower.”

Hassouna had been standing near the three journalists, but he decided to step back a few meters away.

At 2:24 a.m., Jourdier shared a message on an internal AFP chat, saying he spoke with a senior Israeli military spokesperson who advised that the staff should head toward Roots Hotel, a few minutes away from Al-Ghefari and Haji towers, near the beach.