The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday published evidence it claimed confirms it was not responsible for a catastrophic explosion at a hospital in Gaza that left hundreds of people dead.
On Tuesday night Hamas—which rules Gaza—blamed an Israeli airstrike for the disaster at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, which Gazan health officials said killed 500 people. Now the IDF says it “can confirm” that the blast was actually caused by a failed rocket launch from inside the enclave.
IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement that Islamic Jihad, the second-biggest militant group in Gaza, “was responsible.” He said that at 6:59 p.m. local time, Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of 10 rockets from a cemetery. Reports of an explosion at the hospital also emerged at the same time, Hagari added.
“According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired—and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” Hagari said. “They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.”
After arriving in Israel on Wednesday, President Joe Biden concurred with the IDF’s conclusions. “I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden said as he spoke alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Reuters. “But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot, we’ve got to overcome a lot of things.”
The statement from Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, did not clarify what the IDF believed the true number of casualties of the hospital explosion to be. He did, however, say aerial footage showed there was “no direct hit of the hospital itself,” with a parking lot outside the facility being “the only location damaged.” Hagari said if the blast had been caused “by an aerial munition,” it would have caused craters and structural damage to buildings—neither of which had been detected.
Hagari went on to criticize media outlets that “immediately reported the unverified claims by Hamas.” “It is impossible to know what happened as quickly as Hamas claimed they knew,” he added. “That should have been an initial warning sign for many.”
He also explained that the IDF confirmed that “there was no IDF fire—by land, sea or air—that hit the hospital.” At the same time, Hagari said, Israeli radar tracked rockets launched from inside Gaza at the time of the explosion. “The trajectory analysis from the barrage of rockets confirms that the rockets were fired in close proximity to the hospital.”
Hagari said “two independent videos” also showed the failure of the rocket launch and its trajectory toward the ground as it fell in the hospital compound. The IDF also released a recording of a conversation “between terrorists talking about the rocket misfiring.”
“I’m telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this falling,” one voice, attributed to “Hamas Operative #1,” says in the audio, according to the IDF’s translated subtitles. “And so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” a second operative replies. The second man goes on to add: “They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.” The first later says: “They shot it coming from the cemetery behind the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital [the name by which the facility is better known], and it misfired and fell on them.”
Hagari added that rockets fired from Gaza toward Israel commonly fall short. “During this war, we have counted approximately 450 rockets that misfired and fell inside Gaza,” he said. “Palestinian civilians pay the price.” The IDF said it is sharing the information with its partners, “first and foremost the United States.”
After Biden’s visit to Israel, he had planned to travel to Jordan to meet with the country’s leaders, as well as those from Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to de-escalate the risk of a wider conflict and establish aid for Gaza. Jordan canceled the planned summit in the wake of the hospital bombing.
The Israeli military announced Wednesday that humanitarian aid would be made available in southern Gaza close to the Egyptian border and renewed calls for residents in the northern Gaza City to move south. It said the aid would be provided in a “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi but did not clarify how the aid would get there.
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