Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza have killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to the Gaza health ministry and the media organisations the journalists worked for.

Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was struck twice on Monday in what has been described as a “double-tap” attack.

The initial strike hit the top floor of a building at Nasser Hospital. Minutes later, as journalists and rescue workers rushed to the scene, a second missile struck the same location, according to Dr Ahmed al Farra, head of the hospital’s paediatrics department.

Al Jazeera, the Associated Press (AP), and Reuters said their journalists were among those killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “deeply regrets” the incident, calling it a “tragic mishap”.

“Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians,” he added. “The military authorities are conducting a thorough investigation.”

A British consultant surgeon, who worked at the Nasser Hospital earlier this summer, described the attack on Monday morning as “barbarism in the extreme”.

Consultant surgeon Professor Nick Maynard told Sky News it was a “typical double strike that the Israelis use frequently”. It targets an area, then hits it shortly afterwards, often when emergency services respond, he explained.

The Israeli military said its troops carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and that it would conduct an investigation into the incident. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such”.

In a further statement, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Effie Defrin said: “We are aware of reports that harm was caused to civilians, including journalists. I would like to be clear from the start – the IDF does not intentionally target civilians.

“The IDF makes every effort to mitigate harm to civilians, while ensuring the safety of our troops.”

He said forces were “operating in an extremely complex reality” and that Hamas “deliberately use civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, as shields”.

He said the findings of Israel’s investigation will be presented “as transparently as possible”.

Who are the journalists?

Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist who freelanced for AP during the war, as well as other news outlets, was killed in Monday’s strike.

AP said in a statement that it was shocked and saddened by the death of Dagga and the loss of other journalists.

Dagga, a mother of a 12-year-old son who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war, frequently based herself at Nasser, the news agency said. Most recently, she reported on the hospital’s doctors struggling to save starving and malnourished children.

“We are doing everything we can to keep our journalists in Gaza safe as they continue to provide crucial eyewitness reporting in difficult and dangerous conditions,” AP said.

Independent Arabia, the Arabic-language edition of The Independent, said it also collaborated with Dagga.

Al Jazeera confirmed cameraman Mohammed Salama was among those killed.

Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera, spoke to Sky News from Doha, Qatar, after Mr Salama was killed.

“They were reporting closer to the hospital, knowing that was somehow safer than the frontline,” he said. “We’re talking about a crime against journalism.”

Reuters said in a statement that it was “devastated” after two of its journalists were killed at the Nasser Hospital, and one was injured.

Contractor cameraman Hussam al Masri was also killed in the strikes on Nasser Hospital, Reuters said.

Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist whose work had been occasionally published by Reuters, was also killed. Photographer Hatem Khaled, a Reuters contractor, was wounded.

A fifth journalist, Ahmed Abu Aziz, who worked as a freelance reporter, succumbed to his wounds following the strikes at the Nasser Hospital.

One of the bloodiest conflicts for media workers

The Israel-Hamas war has been among the deadliest conflicts for journalists, with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reporting at least 192 media workers killed in Gaza during the 22-month-long conflict.

The CPJ says that 18 journalists have died so far in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders, said press freedom advocates have never witnessed such a significant decline in journalist safety. He said journalists had been killed in both indiscriminate bombings and deliberate attacks.

“They are doing everything they can to silence independent voices that are trying to report on Gaza,” said Mr Bruttin.

Israel has accused journalists in Gaza of ties to militant groups, as in the case of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al Sharif, who was targeted and killed by Israeli forces earlier this month.

The Israeli military claimed Sharif led a Hamas cell, a charge both Al Jazeera and Sharif rejected as unfounded.

In the absence of direct access, news organisations largely depend on Palestinian journalists and local residents in Gaza to document and provide first-hand accounts of the events unfolding on the ground.

Many journalists reporting from Gaza are enduring the same hardships as those they cover, including the daily struggle to secure food for themselves and their families.

“It is a particular burden that they carry, as well as living in a war zone,” Sky Middle East correspondent Adam Parsons said.

Additional casualties on Monday

In addition to the casualties at Nasser Hospital, medical officials in northern Gaza reported further fatalities resulting from strikes and gunfire along routes leading to aid distribution sites.

According to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, an airstrike on a neighbourhood claimed the lives of three Palestinians, including a child.

Al Awda Hospital in Deir al Balah reported six people attempting to reach a central Gaza aid distribution point were shot and killed in Israeli gunfire. The hospital said 15 others were wounded in the incident.

The IDF has previously “strongly rejected” accusations it targets civilians – and maintained its forces operate near aid sites to stop supplies from falling into the hands of militants.

It is an innocuous term for a horrible tactic. A “double tap” sounds so innocent and unthreatening. In fact, it is a term saved for a particularly brutal kind of attack.

And so it seems was the fate of those who died in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. First one strike hit the building, ripping away a chunk of the wall and injuring the people inside.

Fifteen minutes later, as rescuers and journalists rushed in, and as the scene was being broadcast live, a second explosion ripped through the courtyard, killing those who had come to help.

Latest updates: Israel strikes Nasser hospital

So the first tap causes harm and brings people to the scene; the second inflicts yet more devastation upon the people who came to help.

It’s a tactic that’s been used by a variety of countries over the years, most recently by Russia in Ukraine and, enthusiastically, by Bashar al Assad while he was president of Syria.

This time, it left more than 20 people dead, among them medics, patients, and five journalists. The scenes of carnage were horrendous – we saw images of death and destruction. One man, a journalist who survived the explosions, was filmed sitting in the hospital, his head and body soaked in blood, utterly dazed.

Nasser is the last fully functioning hospital in southern Gaza. To see it struck again was, in the words of British surgeon Professor Nick Maynard, “barbarism in the extreme”.

He told Sky News: “This hospital has been bombed several times over the last 22 months. It is murder. These are war crimes killing innocent civilians. As barbaric as anything I have seen in Gaza.”

Among the dead was photographer Mariam Daqqa. Hours before her death, her name appeared on the front page of a leading Israeli newspaper, a credit for a haunting photo she had taken of an emaciated child.

Her press vest, recovered from the rubble, was later laid across her coffin while her camera, still marked by her own blood, was held aloft.

Amanda Nasser, an American emergency nurse who had been working inside the hospital, survived by chance. “We were told to leave for [a] training session,” she said. “Thirty minutes later, the hospital was hit twice. Mariam was a dear friend. Getting that news broke me down.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the attack as “a tragic mishap” and an investigation has been opened. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) insists it does not deliberately target civilians; Mr Netanyahu says that Israel values the work of “journalists, health workers and all citizens”.

But it’s also a fact that Nasser hospital is a popular place for media workers to gather, to use the internet and to chase and trade stories. And if we know that, so does the Israeli military.

It would be naive to think that the chance of killing journalists, as well as, obviously, health workers, was not obvious to those who launched this attack. “We do not intentionally target civilians,” says the IDF’s spokesperson Effie Defrin. “We regret any harm to uninvolved individuals.”

And yet, somehow, it happened. Not just one explosion, but two.

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There are at least five different groups who try to keep track of how many journalists have been killed in Gaza. They all come up with different figures, but they agree that the total is above 200, and may even be more than 300.

And remember – foreign journalists are barred from entering Gaza, so the ability of the world to scrutinise what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza is largely dependent upon the work of these people, hundreds of whom are now dead.

Israel may not be targeting them, but it is certainly killing a lot of journalists along the way.

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This is a crucial moment in this conflict. Parts of Gaza have been designated as suffering from famine, just as Israel’s military might is readied for a huge operation to encircle and overwhelm Gaza City.

A ceasefire proposal is on the table, but Netanyahu seems reluctant to negotiate. On Tuesday, once again, Israel will face protests and strikes from those, including the families of hostages, demanding that their prime minister stop the war.

It is a volatile time, and Israel is a volatile country.

A man who was wrongly deported from the US to El Salvador has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old originally from El Salvador, handed himself into the ICE field office in Baltimore, Maryland, for a check-in on Monday.

The visit was a mandatory condition of his release from federal custody earlier this weekend. However, in a court filing on Saturday, his lawyers said they expected Garcia would be detained again upon attending.

Garcia is charged in an indictment, filed in federal court in Tennessee, with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.

According to a court filing by his lawyers, immigration officials made an offer to Garcia to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for pleading guilty to the charges.

Otherwise, they would seek to deport him to Uganda.

Speaking at a news conference outside the ICE office on Monday morning, Garcia said via a translator: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us.

“God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Garcia’s lawyers, also said: “There was no need to take him into ICE detention… the only reason they took him into detention was to punish him.”

A judge later ruled Garcia could not be deported after he filed a challenge asking to be allowed due process to fight any removal attempt.

Judge Paula Xinis ruled the 30-year-old must remain detained in the US until she can hold an evidentiary hearing – set for Wednesday.

She added there appeared to be “several grounds” for her to have jurisdiction to exercise relief, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Garcia protections, such as being able to walk freely, being given refugee status, and not being re-deported to El Salvador.

After initially being detained in Maryland – where he lived with his American wife and children – by ICE in March, Garcia was sent to El Salvador, where he was then imprisoned in the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

This was despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if he was returned to his native country.

The Trump administration admitted deporting Garcia was an “administrative error”, but said at the time they could not bring him back as they do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador.

After eventually returning him to the US in June, the Trump administration detained Garcia on criminal charges that were filed in May.

The criminal indictment alleges Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations in the country.

Minutes after his release on Friday, officials notified Garcia they intended to deport him to Uganda.

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Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, US President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and other officials claim Garcia was a member of MS-13 – an international criminal gang formed by immigrants who had fled El Salvador‘s civil war to protect Salvadoran immigrants from rival gangs.

Garcia’s lawyers strongly deny the claims.