Hamas immediately blamed Israel for Tuesday’s explosion at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City and claimed that more than 500 people were killed in a heinous targeted war crime.
But after an investigation and widespread protests in the Arab world, the Israel Defense Forces determined that the Islamic Jihad arm of the terrorist group was actually behind the disaster and had exaggerated the death toll in its attempts to frame it as a Israeli attack.
This is how Israel backed up its claim:
IDF briefing
On Wednesday, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari released the findings of his military’s after-action review, which concluded that “Islamic Jihad fired a volley of around 10 rockets from a nearby cemetery” at the 6:59 pm, the same time the news arrived. of an explosion at the medical center.
He said investigators found that “there was no IDF fire” that hit the hospital, and radar systems tracked Hamas rockets fired from near the hospital.
He also cited videos showing a failed rocket landing on the hospital grounds and said investigators found no evidence of “craters and structural damage” that would have been consistent with an airstrike.
“The IDF acts in accordance with international law,” Hagari said, noting that some media outlets “ran with Hamas’ lies.”
The bodies of the Palestinians killed at the Ahli Arab Hospital lie on Tuesday at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.ZUMAPRESS.com
“In conclusion, this incident shows how accusations – in this case, false and unfounded accusations made by terrorists – against Israel can spread and inflame tensions in the region,” he said, referring to widespread protests in the Arab world.
Hagari said Hamas was also “inflating the number of victims” in its narrative of the events.
Hamas audio recording
The IDF also released an audio recording Wednesday morning of what it said were two Islamic Jihad terrorists acknowledging responsibility for the accidental attack.
“Is it ours?” An agent is heard asking in the recording, according to the IDF translation.
“It seems so,” his cohort responds.
The alleged members of the Islamic Jihad are then heard acknowledging that the missile shrapnel “are local pieces, and not Israeli shrapnel,” coming from rockets fired from the “cemetery behind the hospital.”
“But God bless them, couldn’t they have found another place to exploit?” asked one of them.
US defense assessment
President Biden, who was in Israel to show solidarity with America’s staunch ally, told reporters on Wednesday that Israel was not to blame for the attack, citing “the data that my Department of Defense showed me.”
“From what I’ve seen, it looks like the other team did it, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a news conference in Tel Aviv.
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“While we continue to gather information, our current assessment, based on analysis of aerial imagery, interceptions and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the Gaza hospital yesterday,” said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the organization. . National Security Council, she said in a statement.
Independent analysis
Several independent analysts said their preliminary investigations supported the IDF’s claims, including GeoConfirmed, a volunteer group that uses geolocation data and other publicly available information to assess incidents.
The group said in X that “a missile launched by a Palestinian group [which] “It exploded in the air (unknown reason) and a piece fell on the hospital causing an explosion.”
He also cited Australian Institute of Strategic Policy, Technology and Security researcher Nathan Ruser’s debunking of footage purporting to show that the IDF had launched an airstrike on the hospital.
Palestinians take part in a protest in support of the people of Gaza, after the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza for which Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed each other.REUTERS
Ruser said he had shown that the images were actually “from a totally different incident, an hour after the explosion at the hospital, and show an attack between 1.5 and 4 kilometers away.”
“We don’t have any of the indicators of an airstrike, none,” Michael Knights, an expert on military and security issues at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Wall Street Journal.
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“What we have instead is a scene that was clearly hit by a rolling fireball,” he said, adding that was consistent with the Israeli military’s explanation that a rocket failed. The Knights also said they doubted that would have resulted in a “mass casualty incident.”
Other failed Hamas rockets
Israel also noted that 450 rockets had “missed and fallen inside Gaza” in the 11 days since the war broke out, and the IDF released an infographic of the failed launches to support its claim about the hospital explosion.
Video images showing no impact craters.
The IDF also released aerial footage of the hospital compound filmed on Wednesday morning that does not show any impact that would have been caused by an Israeli missile.
Instead, it illustrates the lack of a large crater in the parking lot where the explosion occurred.
So let’s go over it.
We now have video from the scene showing that the explosion occurred in the parking lot and that the buildings are intact. There is no crater or demolished building. This is inconsistent with the type of bomb that many were suggesting yesterday. pic.twitter.com/HFKKxS8kvr pic.twitter.com/SggG3Ktbiy
-AG (@AGHamilton29) October 18, 2023
Hospital statement
The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East runs Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, and on Wednesday officials withdrew a statement blaming Israel, according to the Journal.
Hosam Naoum, the Anglican archbishop in Jerusalem, reportedly refused to assign blame when asked by reporters, saying that the hospital parking lot was directly affected by the explosion, not the medical center.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn