https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possible-crater-from-gaza-hospital-blast/
Bellingcat analysed footage and images of the aftermath of the Gaza Hospital Blast and identified what appears to be the impact crater.
So... setting aside the source of this explosive for a moment (because there's a lot of speculation and no firm answer yet), can we all agree that there's no way this killed 500 people? The impact crater is about the size of a sewer manhole (there's one near it in the panorama image in the article).
The initial reporting on this was sensationalized to generate outrage and sympathy.
Estimation at best. They probably knew about 500 people were there, but had no idea of a body count.
That being said, a lot of people were sleeping in the grass next to the impact site, and some in the parking lot. They are estimating around 200-300 people. Some of the people in the grass were already dead.
But most were using it as temporary sleeping area due to the destruction of their home.
Last point I'll talk about is that this crater was not caused by an airstrike like Hamas claimed. And the hospital is not destroyed which they also claimed. And the ballistics show that it would have come from not Hamas, but the other faction in the region, the Islamic Jihad group territory.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It shows a strong character, moral compass, openness and social skills to publicly change your opinion/stance.
You have my highest respect.
triage. These people were at a hospital. The hospital almost certainly knew how many people were waiting on care
There's no incentive for Hamas to not lie and not overestimate. What are they have to lose? Best case it will go heavily against Israel, worst case? There's no bad case.
We started with a hospital being hit by Israeli, 500 dead, now looks like Hamas' rocket struck parking lot and soon we learn that only few cars got damaged.
This is the thing I've been thinking about a lot. I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near that explosion, but aftermath sure doesn't seem to line up with "500 people killed in hospital collapse caused by explosion". I don't even see a collapsed building in the panorama shot. Somebody's lying their ass off, and I have no idea who it is.
Based on the pictures in the article, there was definitely some damage to nearby buildings, particularly the roofs of the two buildings to the south. But "collapsed" seems to be sensationalism/clickbait. For that I would blame the journalists doing the reporting.
Here's a clue who's lying. It's the ones who claim that 500 peoole were killed, that's a preposterous figure that Zionist haters lapped up.
The problem is that the Israeli state has done preposterously malicious things in the past. But in this case, Hamas was trying to pull a fast one, and they honestly played a blinder.
People will remember the outrage and disgust they felt, despite the later retraction.
I haven't seen a reputable source yet claim that the deaths weren't in the hundreds, and none lower than 300. That's still an enormous loss of civilian life and not meaningfully distinct from 500, IMO. I do have to go outside sometimes, meaning that I'm not getting second by second updates, so if you have a reputable source to meaningfully dispute the death count, I'd be happy to consider it.
The other issue is that Hamas released that death count less than thirty minutes after the explosion. There's no way to get an accurate number that quickly.
A pretty plausible scenario is that they realized the fuck up, which probably did cause an extensive number of casualties given that the courtyard was apparently full of civilians, and immediately pushed a story about Israel catastrophically bombing a hospital in order to deflect attention, in hopes that western media would repeat the story without question, which was of course a correct assumption.
It's known that their hospital system has servere levels of over crowding, and the article states both that:
The video shows cots, blankets, and other personal belongings on the grassy area. Taken together, these two videos indicate that it was likely occupied by people who were resting or sleeping there at the time of the explosion.
And that:
Other images from the parking lot of the hospital show widespread damage to vehicles in the parking lot, including one that was flipped over onto its roof. Another vehicle nearby shows signs of extensive damage, while others show evidence that they were engulfed in flames.
...an over crowded space, babies in cots, with an explosion large enough to flip a car, near one of the few areas with grass soft enough to sleep on.
Plus a fire.
Plus due a hospital low on supplies, low on water, in need of emergency power... Could probably kill hundreds, and cause the death of more.
If the hospital had some structural damage as well. Could probably do plenty of killing. The article doesn't nominate a number, so I can't speak to your source on that.
Video of the aftermath. It's horrific. ~500 is accurate. When half of them are children it doesn't take up as much space as you think.
::: spoiler spoiler Seriously, don't click unless you're ok seeing a lot of dead kids https://twitter.com/LocalFocus1/status/1714340397298733479 :::
Right, so, this video is addressed in the article:
A video posted on Twitter on Tuesday night showed a grassy area adjacent to the hospital covered with dead bodies. At least two dozen bodies are visible in this video. Bellingcat is not linking to the video due to its graphic nature.
Did you read the article?
Not to quibble, but two dozen != 500. The difference is significant because of the effect it has had on reporting on the incident.
It's one thing to argue who did it because none of us are sure and "evidence" points in both directions but y'all are fucking monsters if you're going to try and downplay the scale of the violence with absolutely no evidence.
Ohh yeah the doctors on location picking up body parts everywhere def have no evidence.
The video is horrific indeed - but fortunately (!) way less than than the first reported amount of people died. It is hard to really count but in the video itself it seem that less than 50 dead are shown. We don’t know if every casualty was filmed though.
The tweet itself still blames Israel for this, so the source doesn’t even pretend to be neutral/news.
They seem to be, rightfully, taking their time to piece together the details. A short update is up now in this article with the details that they HAVE confirmed. It confirms the direction/location but not the cause
Ignore the bot comment, it pulled the background context but not the important bits.
We definitely need some independent investigation, knowing the track record of both sides isn't exactly pristine.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The ground surrounding one side of the crater shows a cone of scarring and pitting, consistent with the explosion of a munition at this site.
Objects within this cone appear to have suffered extensive damage, including a fence which was largely destroyed by the explosion.
As noted by Marc Garlasco, a Military Advisor at PAX for Peace’s Protection of Civilians team, the impact point does not appear to be consistent with the 500, 1000 or 2000-pound bombs used in Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).
A video posted on Twitter on Tuesday night showed a grassy area adjacent to the hospital covered with dead bodies.
In a press conference Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari outlined their analysis of the blast and why they believe it came from inside Gaza.
The World Health Organisation said the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital was operational and patients, health care workers and internally displaced people were sheltering there when the explosion occurred.Bellingcat will continue to monitor the latest war in Israel-Palestine, with the aim of documenting civilian harm.
The original article contains 524 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
https://twitter.com/GrantSmithEllis/status/1714399186295111815?t=wxkjKFCi8k2oZ0FTiwxV1g&s=19
10-minute video captured by AJArabic around the time the al-Ahli hospital was hit.
As per @Ted55643099:
Explosions on this video: (0:19) hospital. (0:16, 4:25, 4:49) behind and to the left of the hospital. (5:33, 5:56, 9:26, 10:46) behind hospital, most likely the same place. (9:38, 10:51) to the right of the hospital outside of the frame, likely the same place.
Not sure how reliable it is, but it seems like all these strikes are from the same munition class given the magnitude of the initial explosive flash.
So torn. If it was an Israeli bomb, the hospital wouldn't exist anymore, but at the same time Israel lies about what happens so goddamn much I just assume it was them on principle. I guess we'll find out soon.
I'd like neither one to be true.
I'd like to find out that it was a freak accident from an aging oxygen cylinder left near the tanks of diesel for the emergency generator and that a running stray dog hit the oxygen cylinder, tipping it until it fell, broke the valve, which also created the spark which caused the explosion of the super oxygenated diesel fuel.
I'd like it to be true that this wasn't caused by humans trying to harm other humans.
The not-Israel explanation is still an accident (albeit in the pursuit of humans killing humans somewhere else). At least that version is more "war is horrific" and less "war crimes".
Perhaps its just my "empathy gauge" is pegged at 100 when seeing a hospital blown up and dead children. The "it was Islamic Jihad that did it accidentally" answer is equally horrific to me as the "Israel did it intentionally" answer. Friendly fire on soldiers is a tragedy. Friendly fire on a civilian hospital with dead children is equally horrific as a war crime to me.
People keep saying this but it's not true. Here's a case from 2014 where the consensus is the munition was Israeli, with the eyewitness account of a NBC reporter. The impact was also indirect. The excuse is even the same, they blamed 'Gaza terrorists', not Hamas directly. That doesn't mean its the same this time but it's not a given that Israeli munitions would simply level the hospital.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/07/gaza-shifa-hospital-bombing
People seem to believe that every single bomb/missile that is being launched by the IDF into Gaza is going to be capable of or intended to level entire buildings for some reason...
This is such a weird assumption, but I guess a lot of people don't understand that military forces use varied munitions depending on target hardness, density, etc.
There's also a misconception about equating JDAMs with Israeli bombs in a strict sense, where people start to assume every Israeli bomb is a JDAM but thats not true either.
Yeah, good point because another crazy post I saw from someone today argued that it WAS a JDAM that hit near the hospital....
There's a lot of people that seem to think they got their degree in military tactics and munitions from upstairs college this week.
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Normally wouldn’t punch a hole like that.
The rockets Hamas builds are basically garbage. It would leave a round hole like that.
That's not a 250 lb bomb hole
The video footage from Aljazeera shows a rocket, not a bomb
That Israel uses small diameter bombe in Gaza? Go to wiki. It’s referenced there. It was designed for that use case.
Hamas uses movie scenes, video games, and made up statistics. Why would you believe them over Israel?
tbf, Israel has blamed terrorism before and later it's emerged that it wasn't
I think we need to rely on evidence rather than either side's propaganda
The question is: did Israel change their official stance or did they stay with the original message? If they changed the official stance, after learning new facts, I can see nothing wrong with that.
I have never heard of a Terrorist Organization on the other hand, to suddenly accept the blame for something that cannot get factually disputed anymore, where they put the blame on their enemy before.
It's a fine line between owning up only because you've been caught though. It's happened on at least 3 occasions
Hamas is both a terrorist organisation and the government of Gaza. There's plenty of times when a mistake gets blamed on the enemy in war.
Ok - if I understand you correctly, Israel has been „caught“ several times. If it has happened that many times as you say - there must be some kind of report about it. Do you have a link for me?
The IDF initially denied responsibility for killing Abu Akleh and pointed the finger at Palestinian gunmen. But investigations by the United Nations and several news organisations concluded that the journalist was not near Palestinian gunfire when she was killed, and that Israeli forces were almost certainly responsible. The UN said that Israeli soldiers fired “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets” at Abu Akleh and other journalists.
In September, the IDF finally admitted that one of its soldiers had probably shot her but said there would be no criminal prosecutions because no laws had been broken and declared the case closed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/14/shireen-abu-akleh-killing-israel-fbi-investigation
At first Israel celebrated doing it on Twitter, later they changed their story and said it was Hamas.
So they did change their story, but it doesn’t bode well for them as it further paints the story that Israel did it and is covering it up.
Source? Sincerely asking. I've seen this claim made, but don't know its source and claims are a dime a dozen right now.
So far, the initial details already contradict IDF, which claimed no craters visible on-site.
That "crater" is awfully small and far away from the damage. Something landed there but to my untrained eyes it supports the idea of an off target missile. The article also says it's not consistent with a typical bomb drop appearance.
Do you remember the last published statistic on that? IIRC from previous massive Hamas rocket barrages, somewhere in the range of 10-30% of them never make it to Israel, but instead end up landing inside Gaza.
That's not even counting the current war.
What are the yields, usually? AFAIK, Hamas' rockets are your pretty standard rocket artillery designed for use against relatively small fortifications, personnel, or armor.
Hey Bellingcat, how big of an explosion does it take to separate a head from the shoulders?
Edit: How big of an explosion does it take to set a car on fire? How far apart are those cars? ~15 feet from hole to the nearest car? There are a million other angles to analyze this from beyond "wow look at how tiny that hole is"