2013 Photo Contest, Spot News, 1st prize

Gaza

Photographer

Bernat Armangue

The Associated Press

20 November, 2012

Israel launched a military offensive against targets in Hamas-ruled Gaza, on 14 November. Israeli authorities said that Operation Pillar of Defense was aimed at protecting citizens from the hundreds of missiles fired into Israel by militants in Gaza.

About the photographer

Bernat Armangue

Bernat Armangue was born in Barcelona in 1978. He became an Associated Press photographer in 2005. As an international news agency photographer, he has covered a variety of news...

Background story

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories

Onlookers kick at the body of a Palestinian man executed on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. The man was one of six suspected collaborators who, according to witnesses, were forced by masked men to lie down in the street and were shot in the back of head. The Hamas military wing claimed responsibility for the killings.

 

Israel launched a military offensive against targets in Hamas-ruled Gaza, on 14 November. Israeli authorities said that Operation Pillar of Defense was aimed at protecting citizens from the hundreds of missiles fired into Israel by militants in Gaza.

Initially, Israeli airstrikes were directed at rocket-storage sites, and Hamas security facilities, as well as at smuggling tunnels and electricity sources. On the first day of the attack, Ahmed al-Jabari, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, was killed in a pinpoint airstrike as he was riding in a car on a Gaza street. 

Attacks soon escalated to include the police headquarters in Gaza City, and homes of suspected Hamas activists. Civilian casualties began to rise. A ceasefire was reached on 21 November.

Technical information

Shutter Speed
1/15 sec
Focal length
20 mm
F-Stop
6.7
ISO
400
Camera
Canon EOS 5D Mark II

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