A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the air raid as an act of “genocide” and a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Abbas has also withdrawn from a previously scheduled meeting with US President Joe Biden, who is set to arrive in the region on Wednesday.
Jordan
In a statement on Tuesday, the Jordanian foreign ministry strongly condemned Israel’s attack and emphasised the need for international protection for Palestinian civilians and an end to the fighting.
King Abdullah II said Israel’s bombing of Gaza hospital was a “massacre” and a “war crime” that one cannot be silent about.
Egypt
The Egyptian government has issued a statement denouncing the attack “in the strongest terms”, calling on the international community to step in and prevent further violations.
Qatar
Qatar’s foreign ministry said the attack marked a dangerous escalation.
“The expansion of Israeli attacks over the Gaza Strip to include hospitals, schools, and other population centres is a dangerous escalation,” the statement reads.
Authorities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have called on Israel to stop bombing Gaza because they are killing innocent civilians by the hundreds in their bombings every day and it is get worse with the total siege of Gaza - no fuel or electricity hospitals or anyone else,
no food and water for hospitals or anyone else,
no medicines or other basic humanitarian supplies.
Gaza relocation order is causing the sick, the elderly, the new born babies w/mothers , and all others to go to an unsafe Southern Gaza while being bombed.
These are Israeli war crimes that will be broadcast around the world.
We have all seen the Hamas war crimes, but the Israeli IDF war crimes against Palestinian civilians has already exceed the Hamas war crimes against Israeli civilians.
Israeli IDF should stop the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. IDF needs to make their land invasion to find the Hamas fighters without further bombings.
Conveniently, you forgot to mention Israel’s response:
Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But the Israel Defense Forces has “categorically” denied any involvement in the hospital attack, blaming instead a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group in Gaza.
I’m sure forensics can distinguish between Hamas rockets and Israel rockets.
Hopefully the truth will come out and we will see who is telling the truth.
It sounds just like the Russians saying they were not involved with or associated with the surface to air missile that brought down the civilian passenger aircraft over Eastern Ukraine.
Why do you believe the Israeli IDF? Hamas does not have any missiles that could cause this amount of massive destruction. IDF has these missiles.
That is what I’m thinking. The cell phone video has a loud roar audible just before the explosion. Seems anything that flies will have a distinctive sound spectrum fingerprint. Yes, the sound could be faked, and the debate could spiral down a hole of conspiracy theories and counter-conspiracy theories, like nearly every point of debate in Shiny-land these days. “Bibi” said of reports Egyptian intelligence had warned Israeli officials, including “Bibi” personally, of an impending attack, “fake news”.
The large secondary explosion almost always indicates munitions stored at the site that was hit. In this case, it is pretty large, so there were likely LOTS of munitions there!
The IDF had to dance a lot harder to excuse the attack on the USS Liberty, at 2pm. broad daylight. 34 USian service men died in that one. “Officially” it was an accident. Survivors of the Liberty’s crew said it was deliberate.
Anyway, the cell phone video, with audio, is at the 2:02 mark in this video. Should not be difficult to analyze the audio to determine what it was.
Not Hamas. Iran may have been supporting this group along with Hamas… Also, the sort of disaster that happened would have involved multiple rockets and their warheads. The standard Palestinian rocket attack involves setting up dozens of rockets on some roof–occasionally in an alley that points in the right direction. Then light all the fuzes and run. If one of the rockets falls over or explodes, all of the missiles can go off together, including warheads. So, there is no limit on the size of an explosion due to this type of failure. (I hesitate to call it an accident, because the rockets are intended to explode, only not before they launch.)
The security camera footage, which was shot in Israel, shows the explosion several degrees off axis from the rocket barrage. For one of the rockets in that barrage to have caused it, it would have needed to have a nozzle burn-through, or seriously uneven fuel burn, to turn that far off course.
The cell phone video only reveals audio from one rocket: ziiip,bang, and no “secondary explosion” as some say there was, indicating a Hamas ammo stash at the hospital.
That video is interesting. It was Israel’s simple first claim.
The problem @jaagu if that video is accurate would be lying to the victims’ families. What a host of Muslim nations think is neither here nor there unless you think Greater Syria should be in control from Damascus.
The video was from a border area. It is unclear whether it is honest information. It was pulled after some NYT comments on it. The video was not an IDF claim. It was a foreign affairs claim. That does not mean the rocket was not Islamic Jihad. Just that the video was wrong in that it is 40 minutes later than the attack.
Or it was put out by the foreign office clutzes when it was not even the footage. It was Gaza’s response by sending missiles at Israel afterwards.
God do I hate Bibi. His way of doing things is horrible.
There are conflicting stories on what time of evening this happened. Another video from later in the evening had a false claim by Israel. As if someone inept put up the wrong video. The wrong video had the Gaza response and a larger explosion in Gaza.
adding…
Israel’s UN Ambassador posted the wrong video on X as part of the foreign affairs office. A major blunder. The video was pulled. It was not the two videos posted above.
The explosion was before 7:20 pm when it was first reported. The WSJ video is at 6:59 pm. The UN Ambassador posted an 8 pm video.
Any lie will do to cover the mistake made by the Islamic Jihad.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad not coming clean about this makes Palestinians’ lives out to be of little value to them. The deaths are only of value to Hamas and Islamic Jihad if they can blame Israel.
I thought Netanyahu was bad. Even he would not stoop that low against Israelis or Palestinians.
The Israeli military said an initial investigation suggested the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch, before saying it was the result of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket barrage. Islamic Jihad denied the Israeli allegation, and the scale of the blast appeared to be outside either of the militant groups’ capabilities.
@jaagu fortunately, the U.S. has military satellites that can track missiles and establish facts.
Biden Cites Pentagon Intelligence on Gaza Blast
By William Mauldin, The Wall Street Journal, Last Updated: Oct. 18, 2023 at 10:25 AM EDT
President Biden says U.S. defense officials have intelligence that backs Israel’s understanding of the cause of the explosion at a hospital compound in Gaza — that the blast came from the Palestinian side.
Asked by a reporter what gave him confidence that Israel wasn’t behind the explosion, Biden responded, “The data I was shown by my Defense Department.”… [end quote]
I’m sure that solid data will be provided in days to come. I’m equally sure that this will not matter to propagandists.
Yes, there are folks who are so sure of what happened here based on how they feel about those involved.
If you put any thought into it at all, though, it makes no sense whatsoever for the IDF to target a hospital, not only according to its own stated policy, but for political, humanitarian, and reputational reasons. It could easily be seen by the IDF what the result would be based on the current response.
