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Everything we know about the Gaza hospital strike
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| An area of al-Ahli Hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast in Gaza City. (Mohammed al-Masri/Reuters) |
In a conflict already freighted with allegations of war crimes, a strike on a Gaza City hospital Tuesday evening has divided opinion, set back hopes for a diplomatic end to fighting and deepened global anguish over the prospect of more civilian deaths.
The early evening blast at the al-Ahli Hospital killed 471 and injured over 300, a spokesman for Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qudra, told The Washington Post. Israel has disputed that death toll.
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Palestinian and Israeli officials blame each other for the strike. In the immediate aftermath, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, said an Israeli airstrike was responsible for the destruction at the medical facility. Hours later, Israel’s military announced that a rocket fired toward Israel by the Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group, had hit the hospital.
The blast was the single deadliest incident for civilians in Gaza since the war began, coming 10 days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border attack on Israel. Israeli authorities said Hamas’s attack killed 1,400 people and resulted in 200 others taken hostage. Israel has carried out retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza that local authorities say have killed at least 3,400 people.
What is the al-Ahli Hospital?
The al-Ahli Hospital is located in central Gaza City, the largest city in the Gaza Strip. The hospital is owned and operated by the Diocese of Jerusalem, a local branch of the Anglican Communion, one of the world’s largest Christian groups.
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The hospital has 80 beds and handles around 4,000 patients, 300 surgeries and 600 radiological visits each month. The hospital also provides free care for burn injuries and malnourished children, as well as food and psychosocial support. Eileen Spencer, head of the American fundraising arm for the diocese, told The Washington Post after the strike that it was Gaza’s only independent, Christian-led medical facility. The al-Ahli Hospital was spending an average of $1,800 a day on diesel fuel to run its generators up to 20 hours, according to the American fundraising arm.
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Following the Hamas attacks on Israel, Gaza has come under regular airstrikes. The Israel Defense Forces said last week that it had struck over 2,600 Hamas targets — but mosques, residential buildings, international aid group offices and more than 10 hospitals in Gaza have also been damaged.
Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of more than a million people in the northern Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, last week, describing it as an effort to avoid harming civilians. Hamas dismissed the warnings as “psychological warfare,” and told residents to stay. Aid groups criticized Israel’s evacuation order, saying it would be impossible to move hundreds of thousands of civilians, including those being treated at hospitals, to Gaza’s south.
Hundreds of families, including children, women and the elderly, had been sheltering in and around the hospital at the time of the blast, according to first responders and aid groups.
What did Palestinian sources say happened?
Around 6:59 p.m. local time Tuesday, there was a blast at the hospital site. In one video verified by The Post, there is the sound of an object whirring through the air, followed by a blast, with fire and orange plumes of smoke coming from al-Ahli.
Soon after, reports spread of a mass casualty event at the hospital, with officials in Gaza stating that Israel was behind the strike. “Israeli warplanes bombed Al-Ahli Arab hospital (Baptist Hospital) in the center of Gaza City, resulting in the martyrdom of 500 Palestinians, including children and women,” Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on social media.
“Israel has crossed all red lines,” said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, adding that targeting the hospital was a “hideous war crime.” Abbas, who is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is a member of Fatah, a longtime Hamas political rival.
Hamas also pointed the finger at Israel, calling the strike a “crime of genocide.” The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, initially said Tuesday that at least 500 people had been killed in the strike. The next day, the Ministry revised the figure down to 471.
What do Israeli sources say happened?
Shortly after accounts of the strike spread on Tuesday, Israeli military officials said they would investigate.
Within hours, Israel said it had evidence that it had not struck the hospital. Instead, it said the blast at the medical facility was the result of a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group. A spokesman for Islamic Jihad denied allegations that the group was responsible for the attack, according to Reuters.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said that the explosions were caused by rocket propellant in the misfired missile, “which made a larger explosion than the warhead of the rocket itself.”
Israel’s government said a “barrage” of rockets was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad at the time of the strike on the hospital. It also released audio clips of what it claimed was a taped conversation between Palestinian militants discussing the misfire. The Post was not able to independently verify the audio clips.
Hagari said Wednesday that intelligence revealed that Hamas had attempted to spin the fatal blast into a “global media campaign to hide what really happened” and to “[inflate] the number of casualties.”
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| A doctor at the scene of al-Ahli hospital after a blast in Gaza City, on Oct. 17. (Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) |
What has the United States said about the attack?
The strike on al-Ahli Hospital preceded President Biden’s trip to Israel — part of a broader visit to the Middle East planned in response to the Israel-Gaza war.
Visiting Israel on Wednesday, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “based on what I’ve seen, [the strike] appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.” Biden told a reporter that he had seen “data” from the Pentagon that suggested Israel was not culpable.
Netanyahu later said in an address that he had shown Biden “conclusive evidence” that Islamic Jihad was behind the blast before the U.S. president departed for Israel.
Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a Wednesday statement that “the U.S. government assesses that Israel was not responsible” for the explosion at the hospital, citing “available reporting, including intelligence, missile activity, overhead imagery, and open source video and images of the incident.”
The statement added that “the explosion appears to be the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza — and we are continuing to work to corroborate whether it was a failed PIJ rocket.”
What information has been verified so far?
The Post, like other international news organizations, has no access to the hospital site as the borders to Gaza through Israel and Egypt are closed.
Images and video from Tuesday evening show a midair burst followed by a large blast at the hospital seconds later.
An independently verified video shows corpses strewn on the grass outside the al-Ahli Hospital parking lot on Tuesday night. Other videos from the scene showed men, women and children, some covered in dust and blood, being rushed to the nearby al-Shifa Hospital.
Footage of al-Ahli from Wednesday showed the hospital’s parking lot blackened and filled with burned-out cars.
The Post is unable to accurately verify the final death count and has to rely on local organizations.
What wider impact could there be?
There has been immediate diplomatic fallout, with neighboring countries blaming Israel for the strike.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted that “hitting a hospital containing women, children and innocent civilians is the latest example of Israel’s attacks devoid of the most basic human values,” while Saudi Arabia called it a “heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces.”
The reaction may spell the end to a period of warming diplomatic ties for Israel across the region.
Biden had been scheduled to travel to Amman with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to discuss the Israel-Gaza conflict, but the summit was canceled hours after the strike on the hospital.
On Wednesday night, major protests erupted across the Middle East, targeting not just Israel but also the United States, with Western embassies drawing angry crowds.
Meg Kelly, Elyse Samuels and Imogen Piper contributed to this report.