‘Double tap’ airstrikes: How Israel targets Gaza rescue efforts
Palestinians work to rescue the wounded and recover dead members of the Najjar family, including children, after Israeli airstrikes destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, 4 November 2023
Yuval Abraham writes in +972 on 24 July 2025:
“Save me! I’m feeling weak and can’t bear this for much longer.” These were some of the final words of Hala Arafat, 35, who was filmed while trapped beneath the rubble of her family’s home in northern Gaza last week after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike. But the Israeli army made sure nobody could save her, firing with drones at anyone who approached the area for eight hours after the initial bombing. Some time after the video was taken, Hala passed away, joining 13 other family members killed in the strike, including seven children.
An investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call — based on conversations with five Israeli security sources, testimonies from Palestinian eyewitnesses and rescue personnel, and an examination of dozens of cases similar to the Arafat family bombing — reveals that the army has adopted the practice known as “double tap” strikes as standard procedure in Gaza. In order to increase the likelihood that a target will die, the army routinely carries out additional attacks in the area of an initial bombing, sometimes intentionally killing paramedics and others involved in rescue efforts.
Sources say the double tap procedure is usually employed during “imprecise” airstrikes when the army is unsure if it hit the intended target or whether the target was present at all. Thwarting the rescue of the wounded from beneath the rubble, moreover, means that the target, if present, will still likely die — either from their injuries, from suffocation due to toxic gases, or from hunger and thirst.
A source who was present in attack coordination rooms known as strike cells in the Israeli army’s Southern Command, and who witnessed double tap strikes, told +972 and Local Call that the military knows the practice is a death sentence for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of wounded civilians trapped under the rubble, along with their would-be rescuers.
“If there’s a strike on a senior commander, another one will be carried out afterward to ensure rescue efforts don’t take place,” he explained. “First responders, rescue teams — they kill them. They strike again, on top of them.” According to this source, the secondary strikes he witnessed were carried out by the Air Force using drones, without knowing who the victims were: they could have been “Hamas rescue teams” who came to assist the senior target, but also Civil Defense personnel, Red Crescent paramedics, or relatives and neighbors who were simply trying to save their loved ones.