(Thursday PO) Here's the available evidence of what happened at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza

[GuideToACrazyWorld]

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/12067958 ... al-in-gaza

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.
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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.
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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.

An infrared satellite image shows foliage, like trees, in red. The area burned by the explosion (center) appears relatively small, and structures at the hospital have not received significant damage.
Satellite image ©2023/Maxar Technologies

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.

People inspect the damage at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza on Wednesday, following a strike which killing hundreds on Tuesday.
Dawood Nemer/AFP via Getty Images

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.

[GuideToACrazyWorld]

Civilian causalities are an issue any any war, but the problem is amplified by the remote nature of modern warfare. We are going to see more and more of this. I leave y'all with a Gram Nash quote, actually more of a question that I'd love to hear everyone's answers on.

When you kill from a distance is anyone to blame?

And personally, I think everyone is to blame. All of us for accepting this new era of remote warfare/

[Slip Shod]

My gut feeling from the beginning was that this was a mishap of a Hamas rocket.
What really surprised me most was that immediately everyone, for the most part, jumped on Israel for this. Maybe sometime soon there will be a stray Israeli bomb or shell, but I never thought they'd intentionally target hospitals.
All damn wars are messy and sloppy with blood. The way Hamas began this, crossing over and butchering civilians, is on another whole different level. I won't get into the gory details.
I want to see the fighting ended, I'd like to see peace between all those involved - I'd like to live in the world without carjackings, child abuse & murder. Where is that world ? I'd like to buy a ticket there

[Slip Shod]

I can envision a scenario where Hezbollah attacks Israel from the north from Lebanon and Israel allows several hundred in then detonates a tactical nuclear weapon on them in Israel. A small neutron bomb vaporizing all life, but leaving the land relatively in good shape. Radiation dissipates in a matter of days.
It's not like Israel nuking another country, they drop one in their own country. I'm sure they've thought about all their choices