The Israeli army today blamed the attack on a hospital in Gaza on the Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad, which the Islamist movement Hamas said caused 500 deaths.
“According to intelligence information, based on various sources we have obtained, Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket attack that hit the hospital,” the Israeli military stressed in a statement.
At the time of the shooting, according to the military, “a volley of rockets was fired by terrorists in Gaza, passing very close to Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital,” indicating that one of them targeted the establishment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the attack on the hospital on “barbaric terrorists from Gaza.”
The whole world should know: it was barbaric terrorists in Gaza who attacked the hospital in Gaza, not the IDF.
Those who brutally murdered our children are also murdering their own children.
– Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 17, 2023
“Let the whole world know: it is the barbaric terrorists of Gaza who attacked the hospital in Gaza, not the army. [israelita]”, the government official emphasized in a statement.
“Those who brutally murdered our children are murdering their own,” he added.
The Israeli embassy in Portugal also said that analysis of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) operational systems indicated that “an enemy rocket salvo attack was carried out towards Israel, which passed near the hospital when it was hit.”
The embassy statement was accompanied by images of the alleged moment.
Last hour
Spokesman of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF):“According to analysis of the IDF operational systems, a barrage of enemy rockets was launched towards Israel, passing through the area surrounding the hospital when it was hit.
According to… https://t.co/pw1N264yKM
-Dor Shapira (@ShapiraDor) October 17, 2023
Islamic Jihad is another armed Islamic organization present in the Gaza Strip that is also the target of Israeli bombing of Palestinian territory in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Shortly afterwards, a spokesperson for Palestinian Islamic Jihad denied responsibility for the hospital attack, according to Sky News.
The Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, led by the Hamas movement, said today that at least 500 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a hospital where civilians were injured and seeking shelter.
In another statement, Hamas called on “the international community, Arab and Islamic countries” to “assume their responsibilities and intervene immediately, not tomorrow.”
Images released from Al-Ahli Hospital showed a massive fire surrounding the facades of the building, shattered glass and bodies, many of them dismembered, scattered across the area.
The moment of the explosion was captured in a video circulating on social media (X – ex-Twitter @lanasaiif), the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Washington Post:
Footage captured by the Associated Press (AP) showed ambulances and private cars massing at Al Shifa Hospital, where doctors and others brought in the wounded on stretchers and wheelchairs.
One person had a bloody stump where his left leg was missing and four men carried a body bag to a civil defense vehicle.
Shortly after the attack on the hospital, clashes broke out between protesters and security forces on the streets of Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority and the Arab League, and countries including Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Oman, condemned the attack, generally blaming Israel and urging the Jewish state to end attacks on Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, the conflict between the Jewish State and the enclave’s militias, which began on October 7, has already caused at least 3,000 deaths among the Palestinian population, according to Health Ministry data, which mentions more than 12,500 injuries.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least fifty Palestinians, in addition to hundreds of wounded and at least two hundred arrests.
Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 caused more than 1,400 deaths in Israel, most of them civilians.
Source: DN
