The hospital in Gaza had an explosion
What happened to the blast of a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 14, 2006? Palestinians and Israelis are disputing Israel’s air strikes
The explosion was blamed on an Israeli rocket attack, and the health ministry in Gaza claimed hundreds of people had been killed. The New York Times and other news organizations sent notification to cellphones with the news that Israeli rockets had killed Palestinians in a hospital in Gaza. The New York Times alert stated that an Israeli strike on hospitals killed hundreds.
Palestinian officials have blamed an Israeli airstrike for the blast, an assertion that was disputed by the Israel Defense Forces, which said it was caused by an errant rocket fired by the armed Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Neither side could have independently verified their account.
Social media is awash with claims and counterclaims of who was behind the explosion, according to Kolina Koltai, a researcher with the open source investigations group Bellingcat. “Immediately it just became a very confusing situation,” she says. “You have conflicting claims, all this footage.”
The Palestinians who were displaced by the blast were in a courtyard outside the hospital. There were several parked cars in the small courtyard where people congregated.
Israel has carried out thousands of air strikes on the Gaza Strip since a series of Hamas attacks 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 explosion at a Gaza hospital: No airstrike, no explosions, and no air-strikes for Israeli bombs
The videos show the blast at the hospital, and several experts in geolocation have shown that to the people who watch them.
On Wednesday, U.S. officials said they were looking closely at an explosion next to the hospital in its courtyard or parking lot, to see if that was responsible for some or much of the loss of life. It is possible that a rocket hit a parking lot near the hospital where people were gathered, but American officials are trying to learn more.
There was no deaths among the hospital’s staff at the time of the explosion, according to Naim. He states that no staff was killed, but that two of them were injured.
“It’s very clear to me that this is not an airstrike.” Garlasco says so. Israeli bombs are usually three to ten meters in diameter, and designed to create a large shockwave that propels debris over a large area.
He says that the lack of structural damage to the hospital is inconsistent with other types of bombs and shells used in Israel.
Israeli soldiers killed in a hospital bombing: The Gazans, the New York Times and US officials have stepped forward in condemning Israel
Estimates vary widely, but are thought to be in the hundreds. Garlasco, who investigated war crimes throughout the world, says such a high death toll would be toward the very top of anything he has ever seen. He said that it was plausible, given that many Palestinians have left their homes in order to seek refuge.
News organizations quickly changed their headlines to reflect the counterclaim from Israel and pushed out more notifications to their audiences. At least 500 people are dead in a hospital bombing in Gaza, according to the New York Times.
The competing claims have not been independently verified. 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 number of casualties was overstated, according to the Israeli military. The Gazan health ministry said late on Wednesday 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.
She said that the assessment was based on available reporting including intelligence, missile activity and open-source video.
According to American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, there are strands of early intelligence indicating a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza. It was a preliminary analysis, they cautioned.
The Israeli Military says it is not a terrorist organization and does not prosecute Israeli forces in the Gazan hospital embassy bombing crisis. Defense counsel A.M. Hagari says an Israeli army had warned the hospital to leave
Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for the group, told The Times in a phone interview that the capacity of their weapons supply wasprimitive.
In the hours after the attack, @Israel, the official Israeli account on X (formerly Twitter), posted a video it claimed was proof that the explosion was the result of a misguided rocket launched by Islamic Jihad militants. Within minutes, Aric Toler pointed out that the time stamp on the video showed 8 pm local time, a full hour after the explosion.
The military wing has killed Palestinians in the past. “We have made mistakes, I am not going to deny it,” he said. “However, not mistakes of this size.”
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said the Palestinian group fired 10 rockets at 6:59 p.m. on the night of the explosion, and that one of them fell to earth prematurely, hitting a parking lot outside the hospital.
He also showed an aerial image that he said was taken from a military plane. There was no evidence that a crater would have been caused by a missile, he said.
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 a wiretapped conversation in which a speaker stated that the damage caused by a rocket was from a cemetery near the hospital. The conversation has not been verified by The Times.
On Wednesday, Archbishop Naoum said that the Israeli military had called and texted the hospital managers at least three times in recent days, asking its patients and staff to leave the hospital compound.
The warnings were specific to the hospital, and not part of Israel’s push to encourage civilians in northern Gaza to leave.
Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler, an Israeli military spokesman, said the calls to the hospital were part of a wider campaign to urge civilians to leave northern Gaza ahead of an expected Israeli invasion. Colonel Shefler said the hospital was not a target for the military.
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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 .
“There’s just been this massive sort of pressure to get videos out there, get your take, get your analysis, and it’s like a perfect storm for chaos,” Kolina Koltai, a senior researcher at open source intelligence (OSINT) news outlet Bellingcat, tells WIRED.
The death toll was likely to be low, according to US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the latest information. 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 intelligence led them to their estimated death toll.
The war between Israel and Hamas has spawned a lot of false information on the internet and it’s hard to tell whether it’s actually happening.
The White House and Congress have been told by the U.S. intelligence agencies that there was only minor damage to the hospital and no impact craters. A couple of structures near the main hospital have minor damage to their roofs.
At least 500 people have been killed in the explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Wednesday night, the Palestinian health ministry said. It added that the explosion had been caused by an Israeli airstrike, but the Israeli military denied any attack. Israeli soldiers were killed in the attack, according to the Jerusalem Post.