WASHINGTON (AP) — Five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with the company’s chief executive on Monday for protesting contracts to provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military.

The protest came after an investigation by The Associated Press claimed last week that sophisticated AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon, triggered by the Hamas terror group’s devastating October 7, 2023, attack.

The story also contained details of what it said was an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that reportedly struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was speaking about new products at an employee town hall meeting at the company’s corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Workers standing about 15 feet to his right then revealed t-shirts with words that spelled out the question “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?” when their wearers stood side-by-side.

Photos and video of the incident, which was live streamed throughout the company, shows Nadella kept speaking and did not acknowledge the protesters. Two men quickly tapped the workers on the shoulders and ushered them out of the room.

“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” Microsoft said in a statement provided to the AP. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”

Microsoft did not answer Tuesday when asked whether the employees involved in the protest would face disciplinary action. The company also previously declined to comment about the AP’s February 18 story about its contracts with the Israeli military.

In October, Microsoft fired two workers for helping organize an unauthorized lunchtime protest at its headquarters over the Gaza war, in which the workers called Israel’s campaign against Hamas a “genocide” and accused Microsoft of complicity in it. Israel has strenuously denied all accusations of genocide.

Video from the event, shared by a Jewish employee on her Times of Israel blog, showed one of the protest’s 30-40 participants shoving a modified Lebanese flag in her face and telling her, “Kiss the flag, Nazi.”

At the time, Microsoft said that it had ended the employment of some people “in accordance with internal policy” but declined to give details.

A group of workers has been raising concerns within the company for months about Microsoft providing services to the Israeli military through its Azure cloud computing platform.

The AP’s investigation included exclusive details drawn from internal company data and documents, including that the alleged usage of AI models by the Israeli military through Azure increased nearly 200 times after the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023 attack — in which thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages — starting the war.

The AP’s report was shared and discussed among Microsoft employees on social media and within the company’s internal systems. In a community forum designated for employees to raise concerns with senior leadership, an employee shared links to the AP report.

More than a dozen others questioned whether the company was violating its stated principles to defend human rights and not to let its AI models be used to harm people, according to screenshots reviewed by the AP.

Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist who was one of the Microsoft workers fired over the October vigil, said the company is prioritizing profits over its own human rights commitments.

“The demands are clear,” said Mohamed, who works with a group of Microsoft workers called No Azure for Apartheid. “Satya Nadella and Microsoft executives need to answer to their workers by dropping contracts with the Israeli military.”