(17 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++EDIT CONTAINS GRAPHIC FOOTAGE OF DEAD PEOPLE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gaza City, Gaza Strip – 17 July 2025
1. Wide of medical staff around wrapped body inside hospital
2. Various of people around wrapped body
3. Health worker writing the name of victim on body, reading (Arabic) “Saad Salameh"
4. Various of injured people receiving treatment, people gathering around them including a member of the church
5. People brining a victim to hospital +GRAPHIC++
6. Elderly woman lying on a stretcher and being treated
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Shady Abu Dawood, son of injured woman:
"We were struck in the church while it was full of elderly, innocent people and children. One person was killed, and several others were injured — some of them seriously, including my mother, who was hit in the head by shrapnel. We have always loved peace and called for it. This is a brutal and unjustified act by the Israeli occupation."
8. Various of Dawood’s mother, injured, on the bed at the hospital
9. Various of men pushing a dead body on a stretcher
10. Wide of people walking near hospital
STORYLINE:
An Israeli shell slammed into the compound of Gaza’s only Catholic church on Thursday, killing two people and wounding several others, according to witnesses and church officials.
Among the injured was the parish’s priest, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, who became a close friend of Pope Francis in the final months of the late pontiff’s life.
The shelling also damaged the church compound, where hundreds of Palestinians have been sheltering from the war.
Pope Leo XIV renewed his call Thursday for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza following the attack on the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza.
Hundreds of people sheltered at the church.
The church compound was sheltering both Christians and Muslims, including a number of children with disabilities, according to Fadel Naem, acting director of Al-Ahli Hospital, which received the fatalities and people injured.
The Catholic charity Caritas Jerusalem said the parish’s 60-year-old janitor and an 84-year-old woman receiving psychosocial support inside a Caritas tent in the church compound were killed in the attack.
Parish priest Romanelli was lightly injured.
The Israeli military said it was aware of the damage caused at the church and is investigating.
In a rare move, the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted an apology on social media.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni blamed Israel for the strike on the church and said "the attacks on the civilian population that Israel has been demonstrating for months are unacceptable."
The church is just a stone’s throw from Al-Ahli Hospital, Naem said, noting that the area around both the church and the hospital has been repeatedly struck for over a week.
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