President Donald Trump said he is “not happy” about Israeli airstrikes on a hospital in Gaza that killed at least 20 people on Monday, including five journalists and medical workers.
Video of the incident, from a live shot on Egyptian television and verified by Reuters, appears to show an airstrike hitting rescue workers searching for survivors at the scene of an earlier strike at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Medics and rescue workers who had rushed to help people injured in the first strike were killed along with journalists reporting on the incident, hospital officials told Reuters.
“I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to see it. At the same time, we have to end that whole nightmare. I’m the one that got the hostages out,” he said in the Oval Office when asked by a reporter about the strike.
Read more: Israeli Strike Kills Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, Who Left a Final Message from Gaza
The journalists killed included Mariam Abu Dagga, a freelance journalist who worked for the Associated Press; Mohammed Salama, who worked for Al Jazeera; Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist who worked with several news organisations, including Reuters; and Ahmed Abu Aziz.
The Israeli army acknowledged striking the area. “We are aware of reports that harm was caused to civilians, including journalists,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Effie Defrin, adding that the incident would be subject to an immediate inquiry.
“The IDF does not intentionally target civilians. The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops,” he added.
It comes two weeks after Israel killed four Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted strike in Gaza City.
At least 192 journalists have been killed in Gaza in the 22-month conflict, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—189 of them Palestinians. In a statement condemning the strikes, the CPJ called on “the international community to hold Israel accountable for its continued unlawful attacks on the press.”
The war was triggered after the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. More than 61,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
In the absence of independent monitoring on the ground, Gaza’s Health Ministry is the primary source for casualty data relied upon by humanitarian groups, journalists, and international bodies. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified by TIME. Data from the IDF suggests a Palestinian civilian death rate of 83%.
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