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The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said Tues­day that its dou­ble strike on a Gaza hos­pi­tal that killed 20 peo­ple tar­get­ed what it be­lieved was a Hamas sur­veil­lance cam­era. But the first strike killed a cam­era­man from the Reuters news agency do­ing a live tele­vi­sion shot, ac­cord­ing to wit­ness­es and health of­fi­cials.

The mil­i­tary re­leased its ini­tial find­ings in­to the strike, of­fer­ing no im­me­di­ate ex­pla­na­tion for strik­ing twice and no ev­i­dence for an as­ser­tion that six of the dead were mil­i­tants, in­clud­ing two who were iden­ti­fied by their em­ploy­ers as a health care work­er at the hos­pi­tal and an emer­gency ser­vices dri­ver. The dead al­so in­clud­ed five jour­nal­ists.

The mil­i­tary said the back-to-back strikes on south­ern Gaza’s largest hos­pi­tal were or­dered be­cause sol­diers be­lieved mil­i­tants were us­ing the cam­era to ob­serve Is­raeli forces. But its ac­count ap­peared to con­tra­dict the se­quence of events in Mon­day’s at­tack on Nass­er Hos­pi­tal.