The Israeli army says there is no evidence of a targeted attack by its air force on a hospital in the Gaza Strip, where an explosion killed at least 200 Palestinians on Tuesday evening.
A military spokesman told journalists that there was no structural damage to the buildings surrounding Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital and no craters, such as those usually created by an airstrike, were visible. The army has images released which would show that the explosion occurred in the parking lot at the hospital, not in the building complex.
The armed forces insist the explosion was the result of a stray rocket fired by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad. Fighters from this splinter group are said to have fired ten rockets from a cemetery near the hospital just before the explosion.
The impact had such an impact because the rocket was still full of fuel, the army believes.
Israel says it has overheard a telephone conversation that appears to indicate that Hamas knew something had gone wrong with an Islamic Jihad projectile. The army has now published that recording on X.
Since Hamas’s bloody invasion of Israel eleven days ago, of the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli territory, approximately 450 have crashed in the enclave, according to the army spokesman.
The spokesman accused Hamas of exaggerating the death toll and also stated that the militant movement could not possibly determine the cause of the explosion so quickly.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian side said that five hundred people may have been killed. The authorities in Gaza now expect at least two hundred deaths. There may still be people buried under the rubble of the hospital, where not only were hundreds of patients, but also hundreds of Palestinians sheltered from Israeli air strikes.
Peter van Ammelrooy
Here is an overview of all known facts and reactions about the attack on the hospital in Gaza City.
ANP / EPA – Burnt-out cars in the parking lot of the Gaza hospital, the day after an explosion killed hundreds of Palestinians.
2023-10-18 11:26:15
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