By SAM MEDNICK and SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Associated Press reporting into an Israeli attack on a Gaza Strip hospital that killed 22 people, including five journalists, raises serious questions about Israel’s rationale for the strikes and the way they were carried out. Among those killed was Mariam Dagga, who worked for AP and other news organizations.

Israeli forces struck a position well known as a journalists’ gathering point, because — a military official said — they believed a camera on the roof was being used by Hamas to observe troops. The official cited “suspicious behavior” and unspecified intelligence, but the only detail given was that there was a towel on the camera and the person with it — which the army interpreted as an effort to avoid identification. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

AP has gathered new evidence indicating the camera in question actually belonged to a Reuters video journalist who routinely covered his equipment with a white cloth to protect it from the scorching sun and dust. The journalist, Hussam al-Masri, was killed in the initial strike.

This photo taken on Aug. 13, 2025, shows Reuters videographer Hussam Al-Masri, in a white shirt, standing next to his video camera covered with a towel on the outside stairs of Nasser Hospital. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)

The evidence calls into question why Israeli forces went through with the strike. Witnesses say Israel frequently observed the position by drone, including about 40 minutes before the attack, giving an opportunity to correctly identify al-Masri.

AP’s findings also reveal other troubling decisions from the Aug. 25 attack:

— Soon after the first strike, Israeli forces hit the same position again, after medical and emergency workers had reached the scene to treat the injured, and as journalists including Dagga had rushed to cover the news. The strike has raised accusations of a “double tap” — a type of attack intended to kill those responding to casualties and which experts in international law say is a possible war crime.

— Troops used high-explosive tank shells to strike a hospital, instead of more precise guided weapons that might have resulted in fewer casualties.

— In all, Israel struck the hospital four times, the AP found, each time without warning.

The Israeli military refused to comment when asked if it hit the wrong person and has presented no evidence for their claims. It says it is still investigating but in their initial inquiry described “gaps” in how the attack was carried out. Israel has said none of the journalists killed were intended targets, nor were they linked to Hamas.

Israeli fire has killed 189 Palestinian reporters in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza since the war erupted in October 2023, giving Palestinian journalists a critical role in covering the conflict.

The AP’s analysis is based on information from current and former Israeli military officials, other officials and weapons analysts — and accounts from nearly 20 people who were in or near the hospital at the time of the strikes.

The attack has galvanized global anger as Israeli forces push ahead with a major offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City, exposing its population to even greater danger from Israeli bombardment and military operations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “tragic mishap″ but stopped short of apologizing.

Covering a camera with a cloth

Before the attack, the Reuters journalist, al-Masri, was positioned with his video camera high up on an external stairwell of Nasser Hospital. A photograph taken by Dagga in mid-August shows al-Masri on the same stairwell next to his camera, with a white cloth draped over it.

In the weeks before the strikes, al-Masri had broadcast live almost daily from the stairwell, according to other journalists who worked there and hospital officials. Five journalists told the AP that he often used the cloth. It is common practice for video journalists around the world, including in Gaza, to use such high positions and to cover their cameras to protect them from the elements.

Nasser Hospital, one of the few functioning hospitals in Gaza, has been a vital location for Palestinian reporters.

It is a central point for reporting on dead and wounded from Israeli strikes, shootings of Palestinians seeking aid and on malnourished people brought in daily. The Wi-Fi signal offered a rare reliable link to transmit news.

Photographers and videographers used the building’s external staircase for months to get a bird’s-eye view of the city of Khan Younis — and in the case of global news agencies like Reuters and AP, to supply live video footage to newsrooms around the world. The AP had repeatedly informed the army that its journalists were stationed there.

An Israeli military official said that several days before the attack, Israeli forces spotted a camera on the roof and were tracking “suspicious behavior,” which he did not specify.

The official said the military believed Hamas was using the camera to monitor its forces and said the camera and the man operating it had what they described as a towel draped over them, suggesting an effort at concealment. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

A second person was killed in the strike that hit al-Masri. Hospital officials have identified all 22 dead, saying they were a mix of health and rescue workers, journalists, and relatives of patients. But they said they could not be certain which of them was the other person killed in the first strike, since all the bodies were collected at the same time.

There has been no evidence of a second camera at the site where al-Masri was killed.

At about the same time as the first stairway was hit, Israel struck another part of the hospital, according to witnesses and video footage showing smoke rising from the location.

Israel has struck hospitals and journalists on repeated occasions throughout the war. Both are supposed to be protected under international law, but hospitals can lose those protections if they are used for military purposes and journalists can, too, if they are armed or take part in hostilities.

Israel has accused Hamas of operating in or around hospitals but has provided limited evidence. During the war, Hamas security men have often been seen inside hospitals, blocking access to some areas of the facilities.

Based on analysis of the footage at the time of the attack, and speaking to multiple eyewitnesses, there is no evidence that anyone killed in the strikes was armed.

Double-tap strikes

The Israeli military has given no explanation why it carried out a second round of strikes.

After the first attack, a crowd of medics, journalists and others made their way up the staircase. Ibrahim Qannan, a correspondent with Cairo-based Al-Ghad TV who was filming from below, said another journalist, Moaz Abu Taha, waved to to him and shouted down to him, “Hussam was martyred.”

Within 10 minutes, two more loud blasts struck the staircase. Video analysis revealed the flashes of two projectiles and the booms of two explosions. Among those killed was Dagga, who had just snapped her last photos before heading up the stairs, and Abu Taha.

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Dagga’s brother Sediq had spent the previous night with her and saw her filming from the stairs moments before she was killed. “I rushed upstairs and recovered her body,” he said.

Double-tap strikes, which hit crowds that move into areas to rescue victims from initial strikes, have notoriously been used by al-Qaida and other extremist groups, as well as Russia’s military and forces loyal to former Syrian President Bashar Assad. First responders and other civilians are often harmed in such attacks.

Experts in international law say multiple aspects of this attack could point to potential war crimes, including targeting a hospital without warning, and the double-tap strategy that puts civilians in danger.

Israel Ziv, a retired general who once led the Israeli army’s operations directorate, said a double-tap strike would violate the army’s rules of engagement.

Raed al-Nims, head of the Palestinian Red Crescent’s media department in Gaza, said double tap strikes have “happened multiple times” in the war, hitting the group’s ambulances and personnel after the arrive at the scene of attacks.

Israel declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Tank fire was not supposed to have been used

AP analyzed videos of the attack and found that Israel fired tank shells in the strikes — which the Israeli military confirmed following their initial inquiry.

Ziv said less deadly and more precise options than tank fire were available.

“There is no good explanation for that,” he said.

An official with knowledge of the attack said the tank wasn’t supposed to have been used, but was unable to say what the original plans were. The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

A munitions expert who analyzed photos of shrapnel from the hospital obtained by AP said it came from high-explosive shells fired by a tank.

The remnants show parts of at least three fin-stabilized tank gun projectiles, consistent with those used by Israel, said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, an Australian consulting firm.

Satellite imagery from the afternoon of the day of the strike shows Israeli tanks and armored vehicles operating about 4.5 kilometers (3 miles) northeast of the hospital.

The same brigade that carried out these strikes, the Golani Brigade, was involved in the March shooting of an ambulance convoy in southern Gaza that killed 15 Palestinian medics. An initial investigation of that attack by Israeli forces found a chain of “professional failures” and a deputy commander was fired.

Discrepancies over Israeli claims of fighters

A day after the strikes, Israel gave the names of six men who it said were combatants killed in the attack. But this statement also raised troubling discrepancies.

It provided no evidence, and one man on its list, Omar Kamel Shahada Abu Teim, does not appear on the hospital’s list of casualties obtained by the AP. Doctors and morgue workers said no one by that name was killed, and unlike with the other five, Israel did not provide a picture.

Another person named, Jumaa al-Najjar, was a health care worker employed by Nasser Hospital, according to the morgue list. Another, Imad al-Shaer, was a driver for Gaza’s Civil Defense first responders.

The other three names appear on the casualty list, but no other details about them were immediately available.

Israel also did not say if any of the six were killed in its initial strike on the camera. Most were killed in the second round of strikes, and officials have not said whether they were identified among the crowd on the stairwell before troops struck it.

The Health Ministry and the Civil Defense are part of the Hamas-run government. Israel has in the past claimed that some emergency responders were fighters. That was the case in the March attack that killed 15 medics.

A joint letter from the AP and Reuters expressed outrage at the strikes and demanded answers.

“Unfortunately, we have found the (Israeli military’s) willingness and ability to investigate itself in past incidents to rarely result in clarity and action, raising serious questions including whether Israel is deliberately targeting live feeds in order to suppress information,” they said.

In the past, Israel has acknowledged targeting and killing journalists it accuses of being combatants, allegations denied by them and their employers. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas.

Jody Ginsberg, the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said journalists are civilians and must never be targeted in a war. “To do so is a war crime,” she said.

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press reporters Melanie Lidman and Angela Charlton in Jerusalem, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, contributed.

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.5 billion) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the U.S. tech giant to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.

Google said the decision was “wrong” and that it would appeal.

“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

The decision was long overdue, coming more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google.

The commission had said at the time that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Google’s lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business. However, this decision marks a retreat from that earlier position and comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and the Trump administration over trade, tariffs and technology regulation.

Top EU officials had said earlier that the commission was seeking a forced sale because past cases that ended with fines and requirements for Google to stop anti-competitive practices have not worked, allowing the company to continue its behavior in a different form.

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The commission’s penalty follows a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services.

Its investigation found that Google “abused” its dominant positions in the ad-technology ecosystem, the commission said.

Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet user’s browsing history.

Mulholland said, “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

After an appeals court ruled the mayor must implement a package of bills expanding eligibility for CityFHEPS housing vouchers, the Adams administration asked the court for permission to appeal the decision.

Housing advocates and City Council members at a 2024 rally calling for the Adams administration to implement the expansion. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit.)

Homeless New Yorkers who might be newly eligible for City Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) vouchers will have to wait a little longer to see if they’ll be able to secure a subsidy.

After an appeals court ruling last month directed the Adams administration to implement an expansion of the city’s housing voucher program, City Hall chose to request an appeal. The Aug. 11 motion marked almost two years since the administration was due to implement the laws.

The bills expanding the program—which Mayor Adams vetoed in 2023, only to see his veto overridden by the City Council—would have made vouchers available to more people living outside of shelter and increased the income eligibility threshold for CityFHEPS, among other reforms. 

A spokesperson for City Hall told City Limits the administration is awaiting the court’s decision on their appeal request before taking any action to implement laws.

The Legal Aid Society and the City Council, who sued to get Adams to implement the laws, condemned the move and filed in opposition to the administration’s motion.

“By requesting permission from the court to appeal this decision, Mayor Adams is once again prioritizing bureaucratic delay over the urgent needs of families facing eviction and homelessness,” said Robert Desir, staff attorney in the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society, in a statement.

The Adams administration had previously argued that legislating voucher policy was not in the City Council’s purview, and were superseded by the state Department of Social Services’ authority. They also argued that expanding eligibility would further strain a CityFHEPS budget that grew five-fold between 2021 and 2025, and would increase competition for apartments among existing voucher holders.

While a lower court initially sided with Mayor Adams, the appeals court unanimously disagreed last month, writing that the earlier ruling “should be reversed…respondent is directed to implement the Local Laws.”

It’s another jab in an extended fight between the City Council and City Hall.

“The Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the Council’s local lawmaking authority and instructed Mayor Adams’ administration to implement these reforms,” said Deputy Council Speaker Diana Ayala in a statement.

“New Yorkers experiencing housing insecurity shouldn’t have to be displaced as a result of the mayor’s failure to act and continued obstruction of the law. Our city and its residents deserve better,” she added.

The CityFHEPS program, which allows qualifying low-income voucher New Yorkers to pay 30 percent of their income in rent, is serving more than 60,000 households. More than 15,000 households moved into housing with a voucher in fiscal year 2025, according to data previously provided by the city’s Department of Social Services.

There are currently 13,000 voucher holders looking for apartments with CityFHEPS, according to City Hall and DSS.

Mayor Adams (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Housing advocates and the City Council cheered the court’s ruling last month, and lamented the further delays.

“Mayor Adams is essentially trying to run out the clock on his administration and not comply with the requirements of the law that the City Council enacted,” said Edward Josephson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. “Every month that goes by, vulnerable tenants are being evicted from otherwise affordable apartments because they can’t get CityFHEPS.” 

With its decision last month, the court directed the city to submit a plan to implement the laws with the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA).

Because the mayor appealed, the case will be stayed—or held up—until the appellate division rules on the appeal request. There is not a strict timeframe for reviewing appeals, lawyers familiar with the process said.

If the Appellate Division does not permit the appeal, the administration could try a similar motion with the Court of Appeals directly.

“After all the appeals are exhausted, and if the mayor loses, then they would then start from scratch to prepare a plan submitted to OTDA, which would take even more time,” said Josephson.

“People are getting hurt, and it’s not going to be a quick determination,” he added.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Adams’ Administration Delays CityFHEPS Expansion Again, Asks Court for Appeal appeared first on City Limits.

In the Peacock mockumentary “The Paper,” an unseen documentary film crew arrives in a mid-size city in order to capture — fly-on-the-wall style — the daily life of office drones. If the premise sounds familiar, that’s intentional. The series comes from Greg Daniels, who adapted “The Office” for U.S. television, and he’s collaborating with Michael Koman (whose writing credits include several years on “Saturday Night Live”) to recapture some of what has given “The Office” such a popular second life on streaming, even a decade-plus after its last episode aired on NBC.

Instead of a nondescript paper company in Scranton, the setting for “The Paper” is a struggling newspaper in Ohio called the Toledo Truth Teller. Or as the passive-aggressive managing editor (Sabrina Impacciatore) calls the digital version in her syrupy Italian accent: TTT online. But instead of covering Toledo news, the daily paper has been reduced to a combination of “local ads, clickbait, four AP stories and local high school sports scores.” The shoestring staff is mostly administrative and the paper itself — once a legitimate news operation 50 years ago — now only exists as a tiny subsidiary of a company that otherwise makes its profits from the sale of toilet paper.

There appears to be no interest among executives to change the status quo,  but for reasons that go unexplained, a gung-ho editor-in-chief (Domhnall Gleeson) has been hired anyway, and he hopes to inspire his minuscule staff to shed their downtrodden outlook and actually go out and report the news. As a group, they are earnest but lacking any journalism skills. I suppose the process of watching them gradually figure it out is supposed to be endearing and funny, but I don’t find anything humorous about their floundering, considering … (gestures at the real-world need for journalism amid perpetual news industry layoffs).

The staff have other jobs at the Truth Teller, mind you — three of whom are accountants, including Oscar Nuñez, the one holdover from “The Office” — but their new editor says eagerly that they are “more than welcome to volunteer (their) time at this newspaper.” Then, glancing over at his boss: “Is it OK if we borrow a few hours a week from these guys’ other duties if they want to participate?”

Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez in “The Paper.” (Aaron Epstein/Peacock/TNS)

Not to be a stickler, but that’s not volunteering — not if they’re being allowed to do journalism during their paid workday. But since this is strictly a matter of  “if they want to participate,” I guess that part is voluntary? I have such a knee-jerk reaction to this word, because so many of us are struggling to hang on to the paying journalism jobs that remain. The suggestion that this isn’t a profession, but something people should do on a volunteer basis, really rankles.

So I don’t love that detail. Although I doubt most viewers will give it a second thought. This is me asking you to give it a second thought.

You’ll note that NBC isn’t carrying “The Paper,” but has instead put it on parent company NBCUniversal’s streaming platform. I don’t know if that says anything about whether executives have confidence in the show or not. But we do know this much: NBC, once home of the vaunted 90s-era comedy block known as Must See TV, is not currently a hospitable network for comedies.

That’s probably for the best. I want to see comedies back on network TV, but “The Paper” only brings to mind newsprint that’s been left out in the rain: Too soggy to be of any interest. It doesn’t help that the show uses the same title as the very funny and far superior 1994 movie “The Paper” starring Michael Keaton as the editor of an often chaotic and ridiculous (and therefore realistic) New York City newsroom. It’s not on any of the streaming platforms, but you can get a digital rental for under four bucks and I highly recommend watching that instead.

Domhnall Gleeson, left, as Ned and Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda in “The Paper.” (Troy Harvey/Peacock/TNS)

But if your curiosity remains about this TV endeavor (which has already been renewed for a second season, bafflingly enough), it’s worth considering why the “The Office” works as well as it does.

The fortunes of a paper company are never treated as high stakes because they simply aren’t; Dunder Mifflin is yet another faceless corporation and people work there because it’s a job. Not a job they want to lose. But a boring 9 to 5 nevertheless, with all the attendant drudgery that implies, which is why it doesn’t seem weird when they’re blowing off work and pulling pranks during those eight hours each day spent under the fluorescent lights.

A newspaper is a different proposition. The aim of any news outlet should be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and if you value the work of newspapers — and I hope you do; you’re reading this review in one! — then the stakes are considerably higher. Which is why the central premise that animated “The Office” doesn’t graft so neatly onto “The Paper.”

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You could argue the same is true of NBC’s “St. Denis Medical,” which is also a mockumentary; I think the problem exists there and is fundamentally holding that show back, as well.

There’s another reason “The Office” is an example of Hollywood catching lightning in a bottle: The character (and performance) of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott. As branch manager, he has no interest in actually managing anything or anyone; he’s incapable of it because of his childlike need to be liked. A ridiculous figure, he’s a cuddlier version of David Brent in the British original starring Ricky Gervais, the latter of whom played up the character’s reptilian and annoying personality. Michael Scott may be a fool who makes you shake your head, but he’s also weirdly likable. I don’t think TV characters need to be likable, but it really does seem to be a key facet to the success of “The Office.”

Other mockumentaries following in the wake of “The Office” have also used the annoying-outrageous boss template, more successfully on “Abbott Elementary” than “St. Denis Medical.” A show like “Parks and Recreation” abandoned that formula altogether and I respect that “The Paper” also wants to change things up by putting a dedicated but somewhat hapless Jim Halpert equivalent in charge. A worthy experiment. But one that ultimately doesn’t work.

“The Paper” — 2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Peacock