According to two U.S. officials and a congressional staffer, the U.S. has determined that the catastrophic explosion at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday was most likely brought on by a misfired missile from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The United States has classified the group as a terrorist organization.
Four military and weapons specialists were engaged by NBC News. One concurred with the American view, which President Joe Biden alluded to on Wednesday when visiting Israel. The blast was not from Israel, three people agreed. The specialists were shown portions of over a dozen films and images from the incident at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and its aftermath that have been geolocated and reviewed by NBC News; some claimed the projectile’s marks don’t match the current weapons Israel has employed.
The indignation felt throughout the Arab world is likely to be little affected by the experts’ and U.S. officials’ assessments, which supports the explanation put forth by Palestinian leaders and Hamas that Israel deliberately attacked the hospital and murdered hundreds of people.
Furthermore, it won’t help much for Gazans like Abu Fulla Mohammed, who hurried to the scene since he knew his family was nearby. Mohammed saw it as just the most recent outbreak of death and destruction, from which there is no escape.
When he saw that his sister had been injured in the rear by shrapnel, he remarked, “I felt as though I were in a scenario from the Day of Resurrection, with burning everywhere. “I was moving while hopping over the martyrs’ bodies. There were dead children, women, and seniors, I swear to God.
Since the unexpected Hamas terrorist onslaught on October 7 that left 1,400 people dead in kibbutzim, at a music festival, and on city streets, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, have been pounding Gaza from the air. It claims to exclusively target Hamas sites, but thousands of people have reportedly died as a result of its bombing campaign, which also hit other hospitals and, the United Nations claimed on Tuesday, a school as hundreds of thousands of residents fled toward the south in anticipation of an impending Israeli ground invasion.
During the same time period, Israel has frequently been hit by rockets fired from Gaza, the majority of which were stopped by the Iron Dome defensive system.
Due to the embargo and Israeli forces surrounding Gaza, it is impossible for foreign specialists to visit Gaza, making it particularly difficult to determine who was responsible for the hospital explosion.
Al Jazeera, a news network owned by the Qatari government, had cameras pointed at Gaza when the explosion occurred.
The images showed a missile arcing through the sky and appearing to burst midair at 6:59 p.m. local time, or just before noon ET. Another live broadcast on the network displayed two explosions on the ground, the biggest of which NBC News geolocated to the parking lot of the Ahli Baptist Hospital after comparing the skyline in the video illuminated by the explosion to satellite images of Gaza.
Another geotagged video posted on social media comes from Gaza. A whooshing sound rips through the night, and a large fireball erupts in the middle distance as the camera pans through an elaborate gate.
Following the explosion, Israeli authorities started to make public what they claimed to be their own intelligence showing that Palestinian Islamic Jihad was to blame.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokeswoman, attributed a barrage launched from a cemetery southwest of the hospital at the exact same time as the video recorded by Al Jazeera during a briefing on Wednesday at IDF headquarters.
Aerial footage that the IDF said demonstrated that the hospital buildings themselves had not been harmed and that the blast had instead struck a parking area was made available.