Why is it hard to know who was responsible for the Gaza hospital explosion?
U.S. and Israeli actions in the Gazan hospitals: “It is wrong to believe Israel is to blame” Palestinians, says the National Security Council
The health ministry of Gaza claimed that the blast was caused by a rocket attack from Israel and that hundreds of people had died. News organizations such as The New York Times and Reuters ran with the claim, pushing notification alerts to people’s phones with the news that Israeli rockets had killed Palestinians sheltering in a hospital in Gaza. The New York Times reported on an Israeli strike that may have killed hundreds.
Hamas blames an Israeli airstrike for the blast, a charge the Israeli Defense Forces have vigorously denied. Israel says that a Palestinian rocket, launched by a Palestinian militant group called Islamic Jihad, exploded in mid-air and fell on the hospital grounds. The U.S. believes Israel is not to blame, based on analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information,” a National Security Council spokesperson said Wednesday.
Kolina is a researcher with the open source investigations group Bellingcat and she claimed that there are a lot of claims on social media. She says it became very confusing right away. “You have conflicting claims in this footage.”
The Ahli Arab Hospital had been hit previously by rocket fire on Oct. 14, according to the Gazan health ministry and video footage verified by The Times. The Anglican Church said in a statement that four staff members were injured in that blast.
Israel has conducted thousands of air strikes on Gaza in the twelve days since a wave of attacks by Hamas militants killed more than a thousand Israelis. Church officials and the Palestinian Ministry of Health say that Israeli fire had previously struck the hospital on Oct. 14.
The blast happened at the hospital’s operating room, and Israeli aerial bombardment has not caused any damage to the hospital, according to Dr. Naim
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.
There is at least one video that shows a rocket Launching from a site west of the hospital. The rocket, or other object, appears to break apart high above the hospital moments before the blast.
The explosion happened at the hospital’s operating room, and Dr. Naim was there at the time. Upon hearing the blast, he rushed outside to find horrific injuries to the people in the courtyard, including amputated limbs and vascular injuries, he said. He said some of them died in our hands.
Video footage and the extent of destruction show that the blast was caused by an Israeli aerial bombardment, the group said on Tuesday.
There’s not much damage to the hospital from Israeli bombs or shells, which is not consistent with all of the other types of bombs.
The Gaza Strip ‘Oct 17’ bombing attack by the Hamas terrorist group: State of the art and the New York Times
Death estimates vary, but are usually in the hundreds. Garlasco has investigated war crimes all over the world, and reckons a high death toll would be the highest he’s ever seen. He found it plausible because so many Palestinians have left their homes to seek refuge in a small number of 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.
The claims have not been verified by a third party. The New York Times is working to assess the various accounts through an analysis of photos, video footage and other evidence, as well as on-the-ground interviews.
The Israeli military said Wednesday morning that the number of casualties was inflated. The Gazan health ministry said that over 500 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.
“Our assessment is based on available reporting, including intelligence, missile activity and open-source video and images of the incident,” she said, adding that the United States was continuing to collect information.
A senior Defense Department official has said that the United States was fairly confident that the launch did not come from Israeli forces.
The Times talked to Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for the group, who said that their weapons supply was limited.
What We Know About the Explosion at the Gaza Hospital as Explained: A Defense Official Receipts from the Gazan Military
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 acknowledged that errant rockets from the military wing had killed Palestinians in the past. “We have made mistakes, I am not going to deny it,” he said. There are not mistakes of this size.
One of the 10 rockets that the Palestinian group fired at Israel was fired at a parking lot outside the hospital, according to the Israeli military.
A photo of a parking lot that was posted on social media did not show the type of impact a missile would have on people, he said. The photo shows the effects of a fire — burned-out cars and scorched ground — that he said was caused by rocket fuel.
Admiral Hagari dismissed suggestions that the strike was caused by an errant Israeli air defense interceptor; he said Israel does not fire air defense missiles into Gazan airspace.
The admiral played a recording of what he said was a wiretapped conversation between two Hamas members, in which one speaker says 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 for the Gazan health ministry, said at a news conference on Tuesday night that the Israeli military had called the hospital director and told him that the earlier blast had been a warning to evacuate.
The archbishop said the warnings to the hospital were not part of the push to encourage civilians to leave northern Gaza for the territory’s south.
An Israeli military spokesman said that the calls to the hospital were part of a larger campaign to persuade people to leave northern Gaza before an expected Israeli invasion. Colonel Shefler said the hospital was not a target for the military.
“It’s been a long time coming,” a senior researcher at Bellingcat said in a radio interview with the Associated Radio Spectator
It was contributed by Emma Bubola, Iyad Abuheweila,Aaron Boxerman, Patrick Kingsley, Christoph Koettl, Haley Willis and Peter Baker.
The pressure to make videos has created a perfect storm for chaos, claims a senior researcher at Bellingcat.
U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the latest information, said the death toll was likely at the low end of that estimate. But even if it is revised downward further, officials emphasized that the blast had still caused a significant loss of life. U.S. officials did not say what led to their deaths.
The war between Israel and Hamas has also spawned so much false or misleading information online — much of it intentional, though not all — that it is often hard to ascertain what is actually happening on the ground.
There was minimal damage to the hospital, and no impact craters, according to the US intelligence agencies. Two structures that were close to the main hospital had minor damage to their roofs.
