With these photos the Israelis want to prove that they did not hit the hospital. With these photos the Israelis want to prove that they did not hit the hospital

Last night a major explosion occurred in a hospital in the Gaza Strip, probably killing several people. The situation is still confusing, but the first images are now bringing some light into the darkness.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is subordinate to the militant Islamist Hamas, blamed Israel on Tuesday and spoke of hundreds of deaths. The explosion was the result of an Israeli airstrike. The number of deaths has not yet been independently verified.

Israel itself now denies responsibility and wants to prove its innocence with videos and photos.

That’s what Israel says

According to Israeli information, a deceptive rocket from the militant Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad caused the deadly explosion at a hospital in Gaza.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that the destruction in a parking lot next to the clinic could mainly be explained by a very large amount of rocket fuel. “The fuel caused a bigger explosion than the warhead itself.” That’s why vehicles caught fire. There were many people in the parking lot at the time of the explosion.

There was no typical destruction of surrounding buildings or a crater like an Israeli airstrike, Hagari said. He concludes: “The parking lot was not hit by Luftwaffe ammunition.”

There are regular incidents of misdirected rockets from Palestinian militants hitting the Gaza Strip itself, Hagari said. The Palestinian rocket was probably fired from a cemetery behind the hospital.

A telephone conversation intercepted by Israel between two members of the Islamist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, also reported the malfunction of a Palestinian rocket.

There are also radar images of a volley of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel shortly before the explosion. The military also evaluated aerial photographs. There are two independent videos that serve as evidence of a misguided missile. This information and other evidence will be passed on to Israel’s allies, especially the US.

Hamas immediately knew it was a deceptive Islamic Jihad missile and still tried to blame Israel for the deadly incident, Hagari said.

That’s what data specialists say

On Wednesday morning, the first daylight images emerged of the Al-Ahli clinic, where the explosion took place last night. The images were published by Hamas-affiliated media.

The drone images released by the Israeli army correspond to the images taken on Wednesday morning. Data specialists at Platform X (formerly Twitter) confirm this.

The photos from Wednesday morning mainly show the damage in the parking lot. “Overall, the damage to the buildings in the complex appears limited; a clay tile-covered canopy next to the parking lot is still largely intact,” writes the X-channel “OSINTtechnical”, specialized in the evaluation of open source data. .

Data specialist Oliver Alexander writes:

(cma/sda)