It is hard to know what is real about the Gaza Hospital explosion
The explosion rocked the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital: Evidence of a failed P.I.J. rocket or rocket launch?
Yesterday evening around 7 pm local time, an explosion rocked the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. Within minutes, information about what had happened was distorted by partisan narratives, disinformation, and a rush to be first to post about the blast. The result was a chaotic information environment with no one sure what had happened or how.
Some Palestinian fighters believed the explosion was caused by a rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The terrorists were still looking into what had happened. We continue to work to corroborate whether the explosion resulted from a failed P.I.J. rocket,” she said.
The open source investigations group Bellingcat has a researcher called Kolinatai Koltai who is sifting through video and images for clues about the hospital explosion. She and her colleagues have been careful not to make any statements before they had a full understanding. She emphasizes that this work takes time and patience.
The hospital is run by the Anglican Church and overseen by Archbishop Hosam Naoum, who said that in recent days, large numbers of Gazans had taken shelter there to escape Israeli airstrikes. The hospital usually has 80 beds, according to the diocese website.
After a wave of attacks by the Hamas group that killed more than a thousand Israelis, Israel launched thousands of air strikes on Gaza. Church officials and the Palestinian Ministry of Health say that Israeli fire had previously struck the hospital on Oct. 14.
The explosion at the Gaza Strip hospital in October 17, 2004: Israel declares war and threatens to destroy Palestinians with missiles, rockets, and air-dropped bombs
Several experts in geolocation have shown that the videos show the blast occurring at the hospital and NPR independently was able to verify those geolocations.
One video that is live on the news channel Al Jazeera may show a rocket launching from west of the hospital. The rocket is seen breaking apart above the hospital before the blast.
Photos from the following day also appear to show little damage to the hospital buildings, and a relatively small blast zone from the explosion. That damage pattern is inconsistent with a large air-dropped bomb, which would leave a crater and create a shockwave that would damage or destroy surrounding structures, says Marc Garlasco, a former targeting officer for the U.S. military who now works for PAX, a Netherlands-based non-profit.
The majority of analysts think the damage doesn’t match a standard Israeli airstrike.
The lack of both shrapnel damage and structural damage to the hospital is inconsistent with all types of commonly used Israeli bombs and artillery shells, he says.
The death estimates are thought to be in the hundreds. Garlasco, who has investigated war crimes all over the world, says such a high death toll would be toward the “extreme high end of anything I’ve ever seen.” He found it plausible that a lot of Palestinian civilians have left their homes to seek refuge in a few supposedly safe locations.
Hundreds of people were feared dead after an explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 17, a little over a week after the Palestinian group Hamas staged a terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people and led Israel to declare war and begin bombing the territory.
Hamas and the Gaza Health Ministry: Response to the Israel-Israeli Bombing of the Gaza Hospital and a New State of the Public Interest
The claims have not been verified by a third party. The New York Times is trying to understand the various accounts through an analysis, as well as on-the-ground interviews.
The Israeli army said the number of casualties was inflated. The Gazan health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said later on Wednesday that 471 people had been killed and hundreds more injured.
The figures could not be independently confirmed, though video footage verified by The New York Times shows scores of bodies strewn across the hospital’s courtyard.
She said that the United States was collecting information on the incident and that the assessment was based on it.
A senior Defense Department official stated that the US was confident that the launch did not come from Israeli forces.
Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for the group, told The Times on Wednesday that the weapons supply was very limited.
The group’s military wing posted a message on Telegram at 7:09 p.m. on the night of the explosion saying it had fired a barrage of rockets toward Israel — just minutes after the blast occurred.
He admitted that rockets from the military wing had killed Palestinians before. He said that they had made mistakes and he wouldn’t deny it. “However, not mistakes of this size.”
The Palestinian group launched 10 rockets at Israel at the same time, but one of them missed its mark, hitting a parking lot outside the hospital.
He pointed to a photo that was posted on the social media about the parking lot that did not show the kind of impact a missile would have. He said that the photo shows the effects of a fire caused by rocket fuel.
The strike may have been caused by an Israeli air defense missile, but it’s not true, said admiral Hagari.
The speaker in the wiretapped conversation between the two Hamas members said the damage was caused by a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from a cemetery near the hospital. The Times is assessing the material and has not verified the conversation.
Yousef Abu al-Rish, the top official in the Gaza health ministry, said at a news conference on Tuesday night that the Israeli military told the hospital director that the earlier blast had been a warning to evacuate.
The warnings were specific to the hospital and not part of Israel’s push to encourage civilians to leave northern Gaza.
An Israeli military spokesman said that calls to the hospital were part of a wider campaign to urge civilians to leave northern Gaza ahead of a planned Israeli invasion. The hospital was not targeted by the military according to Colonel Shefler.
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Reporting was contributed by Emma Bubola , Iyad Abuheweila , Aaron Boxerman , Patrick Kingsley , Christoph Koettl , Haley Willis , Yousur Al-Hlou and Peter Baker .
A senior researcher at Bellingcat says that there is a lot of pressure to get video out and it is a perfect storm for chaos.
But in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the shifting accounts in news outlets and the rapid spread on social media of unverified information, old videos, and bogus eyewitness accounts fueled speculation, suspicion, and outrage — and, experts say, are making it more difficult to establish accountability for the tragedy.
Many people had made their minds up about whether Israel or Palestinians were responsible for the carnage even before the full evidence was available. A summit between President Joe Biden and leaders from Egypt, Egypt, and Jordanians was canceled after protests broke out across the Middle East.
A flood of misinformation in a short time appears to be having an impact on the diplomacy around the conflict as well as the mass organization and protests which have the ability to lead to violence. “It’s hard to argue that misinformation isn’t a big deal here, and a really consequential one.”
A video that claims to show the hospital blast was first posted in the year 2022, a common tactic of recycling and misrepresenting conflict footage.
A lot of people will use this situation if they can make you believe something about it and that’s absolutely to their benefit,” said a researcher and founder.
Changes made by Musk, including no longer displaying headline on links posted to X, the exit of journalists, experts and some media outlets, are making it harder to vet the information on the platform.
The hospital was hit by a rocket on Tuesday, and an account purporting to be a journalist with Al Jazeera claimed to have seen proof. Al Jazeera said there was no journalist by that name. A quick look at the account’s posts showed that it had trolled Pakistan’s cricket team and posted about Indian politics.
The account was eventually taken down, but not before it rapidly gained followers and was shared by other large accounts, including by a conservative national security group in the U.S. (X responded to a request for comment with an email auto-reply saying “Busy now, please check back later.”)
Many of the unverified or bogus claims about the hospital explosion, as well as other misleading narratives about the Israel-Hamas war, are being made and amplified by X accounts carrying checkmarks. Those used to signal an account was who it said it was, but under Musk, anyone can pay an $8 monthly subscription fee to get one. If there are enough views for their post, accounts with checkmarks will earn advertising money.
“The way that the platform has been shifted just rewards, encourages, incentivizes and amplifies the bulls***,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
War on Israel: Where are the fake Facebook pages? What we’ve learned since X (aka Twitter) about the Gaza attack and what we can do about it
The fake Facebook page appearing to show Israel’s military claiming credit for the attack was posted on a checkmarked account. It got more than a million views. The post has since been deleted, but many others using the same language and the same screenshot remain on X.
According to NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news sources, nearly three-quarters of the 250 most-engaged posts on X promoting false or unsubstantiated narratives about the conflict were made by accounts carrying subscription checkmarks.
“We want answers right away. And sometimes we don’t have answers right away,” she said. It could have really dangerous repercussions when you can’t take the slow and methodical work that is usually required for an open-source investigation.
Some accounts on X claim to do open-sourced investigations from rapid pushing out definitive takes which later turn out to be wrong.
The environment is helpful in getting to a shared understanding of what happened and trying to make sure there’s accountability around what looks like a pretty clear disaster.
Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on social media, usually by well-meaning people who don’t know they’re sharing incorrect information. It’s a big problem in the best of times, but the stakes become much higher during a heated crisis like the current Israel-Hamas war. As the violence in and around Gaza has continued to escalate, people are turning to places like X (aka Twitter) for the latest news on the conflict. But they’ve been met with a flood of bad info—old videos, fake photos, and inaccurate reports—that researchers say is unprecedented.
What Is Wrong With A Heart That Works, And What Does It Tell Us About My Husband (David Gilbert), And My Girlfriend (Mike Goode)
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