Navigate to News section

Video Shows Hamas Firing Rocket From Residential Area

Indian news site posted the footage after its reporters were safely out of Gaza

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 05, 2014
(Screengrab from NDTV video showing a Hamas rocket being assembled and later fired in a residential area of Gaza.)
(Screengrab from NDTV video showing a Hamas rocket being assembled and later fired in a residential area of Gaza.)

Indian news site NDTV has published a video of their news team in Gaza filming the assembly of a Hamas rocket next to their hotel, in a heavily populated residential zone. The video also captures the rocket being fired the following morning, just before the latest ceasefire began.

The video, which NDTV explains they waited to post online until the team was out of Gaza, offers some of the first public footage corroborating Israel’s argument that Hamas launches rockets from civilian areas, knowingly endangering the lives of Palestinians in retaliatory Israeli air strikes.

Here’s what reporter Sreenivasan Jain says they saw near their hotel:

But this morning, NDTV witnessed one such rocket silo being created under a tent right next to the hotel where our team was staying. Minutes later, we saw the rocket being fired, just before the 72-hour ceasefire came into effect.



It began with a mysterious tent with a blue canopy that bobbed up yesterday (August 4) at 6:30 am in an open patch of land next to our window. We saw three men making a multitude of journeys in and out of the tent, sometimes with wires.



An hour later, they emerged, dismantled the tent, changed their clothes and walked away.

You can watch the video here.

In Gaza, we reported what we saw – Hamas assembling rocket or terrible toll on Gaza’s children. No spin, no agendas. Lets keep it that way.



— Sreenivasan Jain (@SreenivasanJain) August 5, 2014

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.