Photographs carried by Hamas-run media that Reuters could not independently verify, but which Reuters journalists from Gaza recognised as the mosque showed fallen walls and roofs and a huge crack at the bottom of the stone minaret. The mosque is located in Gaza City’s Old Town.
Ahmed Nemer, 45, a tailor who lived on the street next to the Omari Mosque, said he was speechless after seeing the photographs of the damaged building from south Gaza, where he fled to seek shelter from the bombardment.
“I have been praying there and playing around it all through my childhood,” he said, accusing Israel of “trying to wipe out our memories”.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to a Reuters question about damage to the mosque.
Mohammad Rajab, a taxi driver from Gaza City who has also fled to the south from his home a few hundred metres (yards) from the mosque, spoke of it as the city’s most important local landmark. “This is barbaric,” he said.
The Omari mosque, named after Islam’s second caliph Omar, is the oldest and biggest in the tiny Palestinian enclave, which has been under Israeli bombardment since an Oct 7 Hamas attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people.
Israel’s assault has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run territory, and has laid waste to entire city districts including much civilian infrastructure.
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