Gaza: Hamas inside AP building

Brussels 16.05.2021 Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday, 16 May.

Israel showed US ‘smoking gun’ on Hamas in AP office tower, officials say https://t.co/0WrxNjgQgC

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 16, 2021

Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, May 15, was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.

"We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life." An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building that housed The Associated Press office in the Gaza Strip, despite repeated urgent calls from the news agency to the military to halt the impending attack. https://t.co/Tya2fOLCJ1

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 16, 2021

We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”

How can we ever trust AP reporting when they claim they didn't even know Hamas was in their building? https://t.co/CqKNO0LJ95

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 15, 2021

Another senior Israeli official admitted that the fact that the bombing took place two days after a tweet by the IDF misled some foreign media into reporting that ground troops had entered Gaza made the situation more difficult, from a public diplomacy perspective.

After Israel destroys offices of *more than a dozen* press outlets in Gaza, CPJ issues statement expressing concern "that the Israel Defense Forces are deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza." https://t.co/rtV5Y3Db9A

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 16, 2021