Government Media Office in Gaza:

▪ We affirm unequivocally that "Al-Saada Building," which recently collapsed and claimed the lives of more than 21 martyrs and dozens of injured and missing persons, had been directly targeted by the occupation army in the first half of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, specifically on October 9, 2023, at around five o’clock in the evening.

▪ The occupation’s shelling then focused on the building’s foundations and its first and second floors, causing severe and deliberate structural damage to its infrastructure and main bases.

▪ This prior and concentrated shelling is the real and direct cause of the building’s complete collapse, and the occupation army’s claims and denial of targeting the building are nothing but a desperate and exposed attempt to evade legal responsibility for this crime, a systematic misleading policy that the occupation always follows to disclaim the disasters and massacres it commits.

▪ Engineering inspections, documented field reports, and eyewitness accounts have proven the falsehood of the occupation’s narrative and its confusion.

▪ We again hold the occupation fully and directly responsible for this collapse, which falls within the policy of systematic destruction of infrastructure and civilian objects in clear and explicit violation of international humanitarian law and all international conventions and norms.

▪ In the same context, we warn of the risk of collapse of dozens of other cracked residential buildings, which have now become an imminent danger threatening the lives of citizens and displaced persons as a result of being shelled and their foundations sabotaged by the occupation during the periods of the ongoing war.

▪ We call on the international community, international, UN, and human rights institutions to document this ongoing crime and similar crimes, and to work seriously to prosecute the occupation leaders in international courts and assume their responsibilities toward protecting civilians and civilian objects in the Gaza Strip.