6 injured in Israeli strike on Gaza media centre

injuries, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. One journalist had his leg amputated following the attack, he added.
Two buildings of a media centre in Gaza City were targeted by Israeli warplanes early yesterday in a series of strikes.
Witnesses reported that the journalists had evacuated after an initial attack, which was followed by at least two more hits. The buildings were heavily damaged.
Some of the victims are employees of Palestinian Ma’an news agency, while the man who lost his leg is a cameraman with the local al-Quds TV, Ma’an reports. The attack was focused on the 11th floor, where the office of al-Quds TV is located.
Iranian Press-TV reported that one of their cameramen was injured. Among the journalists affected was the crew from RT’s Arabic-language sister channel Rusiya Al-Yaum.
Fortunately for them, they had left the Shawa building about an hour before the Israeli planes delivered the strike. RT’s office was damaged, so the crew will move to a less-affected floor of the center.
Among the other media outlets the centre hosted are Britain’s Sky News, Italian RAI, German ARD, Kuwait-TV and others.
The Middle East Foreign Press Association demanded explanation from the IDF over why the media buildings were targeted.
It said journalists in areas of conflict are considered civilians and must be respected and protected as such under the international law.
An IDF report described the target of the attack as “a communications antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the State of Israel.”
Israel sees al-Quds TV as a Hamas propaganda branch. Later, Israeli military told BBC they knew there was foreign media staff at least in one of the buildings they bombed beforehand. However those journalists were not the targets of the attack, they stressed.
In separate incidents at least three children have been killed in Gaza overnight including an 18-month-old, Palestinian sources reported on Sunday. The baby was killed in the Bureij refugee camp, spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told AFP.
Earlier on Thursday, BBC Arabic journalist based in Gaza Jihad Misharawi lost his infant son and sister-in-law after shrapnel hit their house. The image of the grieving man went viral on the Internet, triggering a wave of condolences and a response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who posted a picture of a baby reportedly injured by a Hamas rocket with a message saying that the militants are targeting Israeli children. — RT/AFP.