Israel gives international media one-hour ultimatum to evacuate Gaza building ahead of air strike

The Israeli army has given Al Jazeera channel and other international media one hour ultimatum to evacuate the Al-Galaa Tower in the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon ahead of a possible air strike, the channel said in a live update.

Follow Middle East Eye's live stream from Gaza here.

Al Jazeera aired a phone call between the building's owner and an Israeli intelligence officer, asking to be given more time to evacuate equipment from the offices, but the officer has declined the request.

Unreal!! The owner of the tower in which @AJArabic & @AP media offices are - is talking over the phone with the Israeli army officer begging him to permit the journalists to retrieve their equipments & archives before destroying it .The answer was a straight NO #Gaza pic.twitter.com/dkztsjKJVS
— Shada Omar شدا عمر (@Shadaomar) May 15, 2021

The 12-storey building is mostly residential, with a number of offices for international media including Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, along with Arab and local press.

Several journalists are posting live tweets expressing outrage at the Israeli warning and the short notice.

One Middle East Eye photojournalist has also been forced to evacuate the building.

My colleague Muhammed Hajjar, a photojournalist for @MiddleEastEye just told me he won’t be able to send some photos because they were asked to evacuate the building as it will be targeted and completely levelled to the ground by Israeli airstrikes in a few minutes. pic.twitter.com/x60P2ZbkUE
— Maha Hussaini (@MahaGaza) May 15, 2021

After working tremendously hard over the past two weeks to report to the world the events in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, the Palestinian Territories, and in Israel, our offices are threatened with a 1 hour notice to vacate their office for it to be bombed!#JournalismIsNotACrime
— Mohamed Moawad (@moawady) May 15, 2021

And now bombs could fall on our office. We ran down the stairs from the 11th floor and now looking at the building from afar, praying Israeli army would eventually retract. https://t.co/WU2eLEX7kn
— Fares Akram (@faresakram) May 15, 2021