“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. 

A second source took part in a double tap strike that killed Hamas commander Ahmed Ghandour in an underground compound in northern Gaza in November 2023 (which also killed three Israeli hostages held with him through asphyxiation). The source said that after the initial bombing, the military struck “people who were in the area and came out of a nearby house,” because they tried to rescue the wounded.

According to the source, there was “no proof” those people were affiliated with Hamas. He added that because, as +972 and Local Call revealed in a previous investigation, the bombing of underground tunnels releases toxic gases that take time to spread and kill anyone within hundreds of meters, the army saw preventing rescue efforts as strategic: without help, the target would die slowly from the fumes.

But the double tap practice is also widespread above ground, and not only in cases involving senior Hamas figures. A third security source described how the army blocked ambulances from reaching a strike site where children had been severely burned.

“I remember a woman crying and screaming — her daughter’s body was burned,” said the source, who monitored the outcome of the strike. “Her daughter was still alive, she was begging for someone to come and save her. You could hear the ambulances trying to get in, and you don’t let them enter.”

‘Prevent people from approaching’

The double tap strike technique is widelyconsidered illegal under international law — not only because it deliberately targets first responders such as journalists, rescue workers, and medics, but also because it aims to deter rescue efforts altogether and cause further harm to civilians. 

A 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called double tap strikes “a favorite tactic of Hamas.” But the United States has employed them as well: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that double tap drone strikes by the CIA killed at least 50 civilians in Pakistan between 2009 and 2012 as they attempted to rescue victims.

Russia, too, carried out double tap strikes in Syria, including in a 2019 attack on a market in Idlib that killed 39 people; and Saudi Arabia has used the tactic in Yemen, such as the 2016 attack on a funeral in Sana’a that was conducted with U.S.-supplied munitions and killed 155 people. 

However, while other militaries have never publicly admitted to employing double tap strikes, Israeli military sources briefed the media in Israel that they struck the same location repeatedly in order to prevent rescue teams from arriving during the assassination of Mohammed Deif in July 2024. 

The Air Force reportedly dropped at least five bombs on the Al-Mawasi displacement camp in their attempt to kill the Hamas military commander, killing 90 people and wounding around 300 more. Military sources acknowledged that additional strikes were carried out specifically to prevent rescue workers from reaching the site.

“The first strike hit the part of the building where [Deif] was located,” a report by Itamar Eichner for the Israeli news site Ynet stated. “The second strike was a missile that destroyed the entire building. The third strike created a belt of fire around the area to prevent forces from arriving and assisting him.”

A visual investigation by The New York Times, based on video footage, showed that after the initial strike, the army struck again — this time at vehicles belonging to first responders. One of the rescuers at the scene, Civil Defense supply chain manager Dr. Mohammed Al-Mourir, recounted the events to +972 and Local Call.

The moment they arrived at the site, Al-Mourir said, a missile fired by an Air Force drone hit the ambulance behind him, killing four rescue personnel. He described how he stood, shocked and helpless, as his friend was engulfed in flames: “We watched him burn alive until he died. The fire consumed him, and we stood there, just a few meters away, unable to do anything.”

But Al-Mourir had to compose himself straight away. Crowds around him were pleading for help to search for their family members. Wounded people moaned in pain beneath the rubble. He ran toward the killing field, quickly finding himself gathering up body parts so there would be some way to identify the dead.

He said he cried, unable to stop thinking about his burned colleagues and how their families would react. “Our work is humanitarian,” he said, “but from day one we’ve known we could die at any time, in any place.”

In May, the Israeli army assassinated Mohammed Sinwar, then-commander of Hamas’ military wing, in a series of airstrikes near the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Military sources reported that the Air Force carried out additional strikes in the area to “prevent people from approaching.” The following day, likely as a result of one of those strikes, three people were killed on their way to the hospital.

In a pattern matching the double tap technique used in imprecise strikes, a security source told Ynet it was unclear if Sinwar died immediately — but “whoever didn’t die from the strike suffocated from the toxic gases.”

‘They struck again, when people were still alive’

Double tap strikes have become particularly common in recent months when Israel bombs schools in Gaza, where displaced residents have sought shelter. In May, after an attack on a girls’ school in Jabalia, residents reported that the army struck again in the same spot to prevent rescue efforts to save burned children.

“It was 1:30 a.m., and a missile hit the school across from us,” one eyewitness told local media. “All the classrooms were burning. We went down to rescue people.

“While we were seeing the bodies burning, and there were wounded people who we could have taken to the ambulance, the army called [one of the rescuers by phone] and told us: ‘Leave the school, because we will bomb it again,’” the eyewitness continued. “We couldn’t get the burned and wounded children. They struck again, [when] there were people still alive. After the second bombing, they died.”

In April, Israel bombed Dar Al-Arqam School, burying scores of Palestinians under the rubble. Around 30 were killed, including many children and a woman who was nine-months pregnant with twins.

Shortly after rescue workers arrived at the scene, they received a phone call from the army instructing them to leave as the site would be bombed again. In footage from the scene, one of the rescuers, Civil Defense worker Nooh Al-Shagnobi, can be seen bravely insisting on staying to pull a survivor from the rubble, ultimately saving his life. “Since the start of the war, thousands of situations like this happened, but no one filmed them,” he said afterward.

A source interviewed for this investigation was recently briefed on school strikes. He said the army established a special strike cell to systematically identify schools, which are referred to as “centers of gravity,” in order to bomb them, claiming that Hamas operatives hide among the hundreds of civilians.

But in many double tap incidents, there appear to be no military targets or objectives whatsoever. One of the most harrowing documented cases of this practice was filmed by a Palestinian journalist, Wafaa Thaher, out of her window in Jabalia refugee camp in October 2024. 

In the footage, 13-year-old Mohammed Salem is seen wounded in the street after an airstrike, unable to move, screaming and waving his hands in the air to call for help. “God, he’s in pieces,” the journalist told her father, who was beside her as she filmed. Residents of the neighborhood began gathering around the child, but just as they lifted him they were hit by a second missile.

Salem was killed along with a second boy, aged 14. The military refused to comment on the incident, which occurred as it was rolling out the Generals’ Plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza’s northern districts.

‘They went to save the women, and they were martyred’

In January, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense said in a press conference that 99 of the organization’s personnel had been killed since the start of the war. Al Mourir told +972 that about half of their teams have been targeted. A recent World Health Organization report documented 180 attacks on ambulances in Gaza from the beginning of the war until May.

Ali Khawas, head of the Civil Defense’s communications department, told +972 that attacks on rescuers often occur just minutes after their arrival at bombing sites. On April 22, the Israeli army bombed the Al-Matouk family home in Jabalia. According to Khawas, “10 minutes after the team arrived, they were targeted with a drone missile.”

On May 13, another Civil Defense team attempted to rescue the Al-Afghani family, who were buried under the rubble in Khan Younis. “The wounded could have been saved, but the repeated strikes on the site caused everyone in the house to die,” Khawas explained. “Only after five hours did the fire subside, and we were able to retrieve the bodies.”

Sometimes, though, the follow-up strikes come days after the first. In November 2023, the army collapsed a six-story building on its occupants in Gaza City. Among the dead was Maisara Al-Rayyes, a 30-year-old doctor who had returned to Gaza after studying in the UK, along with his pregnant wife and his parents. The only survivors from his family were his two brothers who were not at home at the time of the bombing.

Two days later, while the surviving brothers were digging through the rubble with their bare hands looking for remains, they were struck and killed by a second missile, according to eyewitnesses cited by The Times.

That same month, the army bombed multiple homes belonging to the Shaheibar family in the Zeitoun neighborhood over the course of a day, killing around 50 people, according to the EuroMed Monitor. The next day, as relatives tried to rescue survivors, they were hit by two drone strikes that killed an additional 20 people. 

The Israeli army’s use of double tap strikes didn’t begin on October 7: back in 2014, during the Israeli assault on Gaza known as “Operation Protective Edge,” medical teams in the Strip described the same practice. Red Crescent staff testified at the time that this pattern was a major reason for the deaths and injuries to medical workers. 

Since the start of the current war, though, it seems the policy has become completely routine. The civilian harm watchdog Airwars published an in-depth study based on a sample of over 600 Israeli airstrikes in Gaza during the first month of the war. It identified four cases that were described as double tap attacks by Gaza-based sources, which killed between 80 and 92 civilians. It also found 12 additional cases in which a second strike occurred within 300 meters of the first, and which, according to the organization, “could be considered double tap strikes.”

In one such case, the military bombed a family home in Beit Lahiya, killing 16 people. According to testimonies gathered by Airwars, the army struck again during rescue efforts, wounding rescuers who had arrived at the scene. Nine of the victims of the attack were children, including a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old. The youngest victim was a two-month-old baby.

The weapons used in these attacks vary: testimonies suggest the army also carries out what appear to be double tap strikes using drones that drop explosives. This attack method was exposed in another recent +972 and Local Call investigation, which found that the army attaches grenade launchers to cheap commercial drones in order to attack civilians in areas it seeks to depopulate. 

In July, the army bombed the Sabbagh family home in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood, killing at least one child. Salem, a relative of the victim (who requested not to use his full name), told +972 that other family members were buried under the rubble, but when neighbors tried to rescue them they came under attack. “A quadcopter immediately dropped a bomb on them and they were injured,” Salem said.

In another case from June 2024, the Israeli army killed at least 25 people in airstrikes on tents in a displaced persons camp near Al-Mawasi, according to medical staff in Gaza. But Hassan Al-Najjar told the Associated Press that his children were killed while helping victims of the first strike. 

“My two sons went [to help] after they heard the women and children screaming,” he said from the hospital. “They went to save the women, and [the army] struck with the second projectile, and my sons were martyred. They struck the place twice.”

The most recent double tap incident known to +972 and Local Call occurred on July 21, when Israel reportedly bombed a water desalination plant in Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighborhood and then struck again as people tried to rescue the wounded, killing at least five people in total. In a video filmed nearby, a man can be heard shouting: “They bombed the place again. People came to rescue, and they bombed them.”

+972 and Local Call sent detailed questions to the IDF Spokesperson, including the exact locations and dates of the attacks mentioned in this investigation. The army did not respond.