What is a ‘double tap’ and why has Israel’s apparent use of it outraged the world?

It has become too familiar a scene: the first stakeholders, doctors and journalists rushing on the site of an Israeli attack. But this time, as they rallied in a broken stairwell at Nasser Hospital wearing Civrains and Cameras, Israel has again struck – aggravating the scene of carnage and enveloping those who try to help and document.

The global outcry went up on Tuesday about this “double tap” strike on the largest remaining medical center in Gaza, which was filmed by the Arabic Arabic channel Al Ghad TV and others which were running the rescue efforts of the first missile when the second struck.

At least 20 people were killed, including five journalists who had worked for various points of sale, including the Associated Press, Reuters and Al Jazeera.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that strikes on Monday were a “tragic incident” and that the soldiers were investigating. UN Secretary General António Guterres demanded an independent investigation into the Israeli strike, while President Donald Trump said he was “not satisfied with this.”

Israel has prohibited Western press organizations from entering Gaza, with the exception of occasional tours, accompanied by Israeli defense forces, leaving them to rely on Palestinian journalists inside the enclave. The committee to protect journalists, a New York -based non -profit -based press freedom group, says 192 journalists were killed during the war, and 90 other prisoners in what he described as “the most horrible press attacks have never been confronted in recent history”.

What is a double tap shot?

This is not the first time that Israel has put a “double tap” strike, reaching twice the same target in rapid estate.

Double-Taps has been deliberately deployed in the past by terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram in Nigeria, who would send a second suicide bomber to kill those who try to help the victims of the first.

The expression “double tape” is not an official legal term and does not appear in the Geneva Convention, but intentionally affected by people known to be “protected people”, such as doctors, “implies the allegation of a war crime”, according to Janina Dill, professor at the University of Oxford, in England and co-director of the Institute of Oxford for ethics armed.

“The tactics of double turn strikes is irreconcilable with the conduct of a professional military force, legally advised and formed,” Dill at NBC News told, and no “combat force should be reasonably acclaimed with double -tour strikes”.

The “more important moral problem,” she said in an email, was that it was “particularly pernicious to exploit the will of individuals to pay their moral rescue functions (help people affected by the first strike) in order to kill them.” She added that “the double tour strikes therefore imply not only that a war crime is committed, but the tactic should also be insult and morally condemned”.

Little, or no soldiers, admit to using double turn strikes as a drop -down tactic, and Israel is not the only alleged country to have done so. In 2012, the investigative journalism office found that from 2009 to 2012, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan killed at least 50 civilians “during follow -up strikes when they had to help the victims”.

Last month, the left -wing Israeli publication +972 published an investigation, including interviews with Israeli security sources, which found double -tour strikes had become a “standard procedure in Gaza” during the war.

Responding to widespread indignation, Israeli military spokesperson Brig. General Effie Defrin said in a video press release that “the FDI does not intentionally target civilians” and noted that it “operated in an extremely complex reality”. He said the soldiers would investigate the attack on Monday “to understand the circumstances of what had happened and how it happened.”

The IDF refused to comment more when contacted by NBC News.

‘Darkened with dust’

The Haaretz newspaper of Israel reported that during the attack on Monday, an FDI reservoir had shot what the troops suspected a Hospital surveillance camera on the hospital roof and followed with another to ensure that it was affected.

The first strike, just after 10 am local time (3:00 a.m., hit the upper floors of Nasser Hospital, where doctors, patients and trainees were part of the operational service, according to the hospital director Mohammed Zakout.

At the time, a certain number of journalists mounted the stairs, as they often did, to obtain a signal to submit their reports and contact their families, according to witnesses. The cameraman Reuters Hussam Al-Masri killed this initial strike, which said that the news agency operated on live television on the upper floors of the hospital at the time.

Hatem Omar, 42, was one of the journalists who then rushed to the scene. “I climbed the staircase; a large number of journalists and doctors were with me on the stairs,” he told journalists. “Then the second strike occurred.”

According to Ibrahim Al Qanan, who was live on Al Ghad TV when he recorded the second strike, the video horodatages showed that there were 7 minutes between explosions. The speakers waited a few minutes after the first blow before mounting the stairs, he said, to be taken in the second explosion.

The video showed eight men on an external staircase, three with orange high visibility vests, a yellow helmet and a camera. Some of them made a gesture towards someone’s camera when the image filled with smoke and debris accompanied by a strong blow and cries. Dozens of people then started to flee the scene, now bathed in smoke.

“I saw blood everywhere on the site,” said Omar. “The staircase outside the hospital was filled with doctors, filled with civilians, filled with people rushing to help, and the place was darkened with dust.”

“The second explosion transformed the area into a silent and frozen scene, as if everyone’s chests had been crushed.”

Outside, the fallen journalists – Hussam Al -Masri, Mariam Dagga, Mohammad Salama, Ahmed Abu Aziz and Moaz Abu Taha – were lying side by side, always decorated with their cameras and their bloodthroughs carrying the word “press”.