An Israeli airstrike has hit the Gaza office of news organisation Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the French Institute but no injuries were reported.
In separate statements, AFP and the French foreign ministry said no injuries were recorded.
The ministry said it had asked Israeli authorities to provide the reasons that motivated the strike on the institute.
“We have been informed by the Israeli authorities that the French Institute in Gaza has been targeted by an Israeli strike,” the French ministry said in a statement.
“We have asked the Israeli authorities to provide us without delay, through appropriate means, with the tangible elements that led to this decision. No staff of the Institute, nor any French national, was present on the premises of the Institute.”
The AFP said its eight staff members usually based in the city are safe as the team was evacuated to southern Gaza on 13 October.
AFP said in a tweet that the explosive projectile appeared to have entered the technician’s office in the bureau horizontally from east to west.
It said the strike destroyed the wall opposite the window and caused significant damage to the adjacent room.
“The AFP bureau in the Gaza Strip, which has been relentlessly bombed by Israel, was significantly damaged by a strike on the building, according to a staff member who visited the site,” it said in a tweet on Thursday.
“The consequences of such an attack would have been devastating if the AFP team on the ground had not evacuated the city,” said Fabrice Fries, AFP chairman and chief executive.
But AFP said an Israeli military spokesman denied an IDF strike on the building.
At least 36 journalists and media workers have been killed since the hostilities started on 7th October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
ALSO READ: UN relief agency renews calls for humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza
Last week the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Reuters and AFP that it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in the Gaza Strip after they sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted by Israeli strikes.
Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe
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