Here's the available evidence of what happened at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza
Category: News & Politics
Via: hallux • last year • 49 commentsBy: Geoff Brumfiel, Becky Sullivan, Ruth Sherlock, Daniel Wood, Connie Hanzhang Jin - NPR
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Video and photographic evidence, along with eyewitness accounts, are providing some clues about Tuesday's massive explosion at Gaza's Al Ahli Arab Hospital, which Palestinian officials say killed hundreds.
Hamas blames an Israeli airstrike for the blast, a charge the Israeli Defense Forces have vigorously denied. Israel says that a Palestinian rocket, launched by a Palestinian militant group called Islamic Jihad, exploded in mid-air and fell on the hospital grounds. The U.S. believes Israel is not to blame, based on analysis of "overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information," a National Security Council spokesperson said Wednesday.
Social media is awash with claims and counterclaims of who was behind the explosion, according to Kolina Koltai, a researcher with the open source investigations group Bellingcat . "Immediately it just became a very confusing situation," she says. "You have conflicting claims, all this footage."
Here is what the available evidence shows so far.
Many civilians had taken shelter at the hospital to avoid ongoing airstrikes
There were hundreds of people, including families, who had come to the hospital to hide from the bombardment elsewhere in Gaza, according to Dr. Fadil Naim, the head of the orthopedics department, who was working at the time of the blast. The hospital, Gaza's oldest, is run by a Christian group.
Israel has conducted thousands of air strikes on Gaza in the twelve days since a wave of attacks by Hamas militants killed more than a thousand Israelis. Church officials and the Palestinian Ministry of Health say that Israeli fire had previously struck the hospital on Oct. 14.
Despite that incident, because the hospital belonged to the church, civilians "thought the hospital was the most safe place in Gaza," Naim told NPR.
The displaced Palestinians were in a courtyard outside the hospital at the time of the blast. The small courtyard had several parked cars and a few grassy patches where people appear to have congregated.
Eyewitness videos appear to have captured the moment a massive fireball erupted in the courtyard
Sometime in the evening local time, several videos appear to have captured a massive explosion and fireball at the hospital.
Several experts in geolocation have shown that the videos show the blast occurring at the hospital and NPR independently was able to verify those geolocations.
One video, a live broadcast feed from the news channel Al Jazeera, appears to show what could be a rocket launching from a site west of the hospital. The rocket, or other object, appears to break apart high above the hospital moments before the blast.
The Israeli Defense Forces claim that radar data shows a barrage of rockets was launched from an area southwest of the hospital at the time the explosion occurred. While the geometry of the Al Jazeera video aligns with that claim, there is no way to independently confirm the radar data.
Photos and an account of the aftermath provide some clues about the type of explosion that occurred
Dr. Naim was in the hospital's operating room the moment the explosion occurred, he told NPR. Upon hearing the blast, he rushed outside to find horrific injuries to the people in the courtyard, including amputated limbs and vascular injuries, he said. "Some of them died in our hands," he said.
Notably, Naim also said that there were no deaths among the hospital's staff, many of whom were working inside at the time of the explosion. "Luckily none of our staff was killed, but we had two injured," he says.
Photos from the following day also appear to show little damage to the hospital buildings, and a relatively small blast zone from the explosion. That damage pattern is inconsistent with a large air-dropped bomb, which would leave a crater and create a shockwave that would damage or destroy surrounding structures, says Marc Garlasco, a former targeting officer for the U.S. military who now works for PAX , a Netherlands-based non-profit.
"It's very clear to me that this is not an airstrike." Garlasco says. Israeli bombs typically leave craters three to ten meters in size, and are designed to create a large shockwave that propels shrapnel over a large area.
The lack of both shrapnel damage and structural damage to the hospital is inconsistent with all types of commonly used Israeli bombs and artillery shells, he says.
Death estimates vary widely, but are believed to be in the hundreds. Garlasco, who has investigated war crimes all over the world, says such a high death toll would be toward the "extreme high end of anything I've ever seen." But he found it plausible, he said, given that so many Palestinian civilians have left their homes to seek refuge in a small number of supposedly safe locations.
"It really speaks to the issue of Palestinians being packed into areas they believe are safe," he says.
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Unlike the rabid reporting over at The Federalist, NPR reporters do their best not to jump the gun holding a shark and pissing into the wind.
NPR does not have a paywall and other pics/videos are available in the link.
Why don't the Palestinians have bomb shelters? After all, they've been receiving millions and millions of dollars from the US for years now. The fact remains, is the failed Hamas rocket fell into the parking lot and barely damaged the hospital. If it wasn't for Hamas war crimes by leaving their citizens exposed after starting a cowardly attack on Israel, then those people wouldn't have need of shelter. They've also been warned to leave the area multiple times.
Why the fuck are you asking me? Sheesh, seed an article that points to Hamas as the guilty party and what do you get for not taking the immediate knee-jerk route? Bowel-jerk shyte!
So sorry but I'm one of those crazy jurists who waits to hear all the evidence. Count yourself lucky when and if you commit a nefarious deed and the jury is composed of the likes of moi.
Because their leaders want to have as many of their population wounded or killed in order to gain sympathy.
(Actually they do have shelters-- really good ones. But they are for Hamas only).
Playground (above ground) shelter-- children can run inside quickly when sirens sound):
To those who say I'm prevented from seeing relatively unbiased American news, I read the npr World News and npr American News web sites every single day, and since I use an ordinary internet connection and no VPN everyone in China has access to it as well.
First sentence:
,which Palestinian officials say killed hundreds.
From the jump, they are misleading their audience into believing there is some independent Palestinian government office providing information.
It's Hamas. It's always Hamas and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise.
I get the feeling it is not NPR's audience that is being misled.
Who is NPR's audience?
It is wide and varied.
There is a host of other sources, use your Google thingee.
Mostly stupid and brain washed left wingers....it's been widely suggested.
By who other than you?
Oh, thousands, if not millions of knowledgeable, rational, and normal people.
NPR (Online News)
Oh the horror, they 'lean' left! I take it that means 'radical' left to you?
Did I say that? Or are you just trying to get me to defend something I never said?
What was the point of your comment 2.1.6?
Is this considered wide?
Perhaps to point out that NPR leans left??????
Just a wild guess on my part, not taking into account what he actually posted, of course.
It's considered editing, please don't do that.
Which word are you hung up on?
I guess that is too easy
I am, for one.
So Buzz-- do you "lean left"-- or do you stand upright?
According to something you posted a long time ago to determine where members stood, with a chart, I stood just a tiny bit to the left of centre, and just a tiny bit off the "horizon", which I assume makes me a very slightly left-leaning centrist.
It also includes me from time to time and I dont fall into any of those groups.
If we are thinking of the same thing I fell into the left libertarian category, but of course those types of things are kinda forced to ask broader/general questions or make similar statements. Not a lot of room to parse out specifics.
Wow, those are really, really sturdy trees. Look it, they didn't even lose their leaves. And packing 500 people into 20 parking spaces occupied by cars must've been pretty cozy.
The press jumped the shark and now they're trying to reel back what they reported. Hamas is as credible a source of info as was Al Qaeda or ISIS.
At the least the press has maintained a consistent journalist standard of 'orange man bad' reporting. Who knows, maybe the biggest liar can win a Pulitzer.
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European intelligence sources now quoted as saying casualties were about 10-50, which is much more in line with what one would expect from looking at the pictures of the parking lot.
but Hamas’s almost instant claim of 500 people killed was what journalists immediately ran with without any qualifications.
Maybe this is why the liberal democrats in Congress like Hamas so much, they both have the same integrity and math skills.
Pretty much what I thought the first time I saw an arial view of the parking lot but, at that time, all the reports were saying the hospital was hit so I thought maybe that accounted for it. Seemed curious they never showed a damaged building though. Once the msm was forced to walk everything back after making what can only be called a deliberate attempt to blackball Israel, I just couldn't find a reasonable explanation for such a high number.
Regardless, the msm is still reporting in terms of "Palestinian authorities say..." as if a) they have some sort of legitimacy or credibility and b) they are something different from Hamas.
Glad I did the responsible thing and waited for more information to come out before forming an opinion. Although I was immediately skeptical of reports that it was an Israeli air strike, that seemed a bit far fetched to me.
This was not a targeted attack of a Hospital.
Appears to be what the reporters from NPR are saying and their evidence seems sound.
What exactly are they saying?
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I also saw a report where the news peoples' camera panned to an indentation in the ground-- the "impact crater"> It wasn't very deep-- the reporter said it was nowhere as large and what we be caused by an Israeli bomb or missile.
When a disaster occurs in this country we start with an initial death count with errors on the low side and incrementally raise it as more accurate accounting becomes available. With Hamas they error on the tremendously high side and rarely correct as more information is available.
With the aid of the media the number 500, Israel as the perpetrator, and visions of a destroyed hospital are now baked into the minds of Muslims around the world as well as some liberals here and in Europe. In fact the number will likely be a little more than 100, Israel didn't attack the hospital and it is barely damaged.
At least you read the article. Kudos!
Exactly, big step forward!
They did kill 15 cars.
But no ambulances? You know, the ones that are used to deliver Hamas terrorist gunmen around Gaza.
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That's the available evidence? What about the intercepted conversation between the Hamas terrorists admitting that the fault was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket? What more does anyone need? A sworn affidavit?
There's also another factor-- which is by no means proof-- but is something to consider. If the Israelis actually targeted the hospital-- what would be the motive? What would follow--- what effect would a deliberate Israeli attack on a hospital have?
Yes-- severe condemnation around the world-- even from some of their friends. And it would not gain them any military advantage either. they are motivated to avoid hitting civilians.
The bleeding hearts around the world are calling for a cease fire. However, IMO Israel is justified, no matter what the collateral damage is, to continue until every last member of Hamas has bit the dust.
It does indeed seem that this was the result of a failed rocket attack. Aside from the evidence listed in the article, from the beginning I couldn’t imagine what the motivation for the Israelis would have been. There was no tactical advantage to be gained, and all such an attack would do is generate global backlash against them.
An attack like this makes absolutely zero sense from the Israeli position, not to mention they try to avoid hitting civilian targets as much as possible.