Gaza Hospital Explosion: What Israel, Hamas and Joe Biden Have Said

Tuesday's al-Ahli Hospital blast, which has been reported to have killed hundreds in Gaza, has led to each side of the Israeli-Hamas conflict blaming each other.

The explosion has already led to splits within the international community. The governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey were among those to condemn it.

Israel's security forces and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have blamed each other for the attack. Israel has said it was the result of a failed rocket attack launched in Gaza by Islamic Jihad militants.

U.S. President Joe Biden said during a press conference Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was not to blame.

As of Wednesday, the Gaza Health Ministry said about 2,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli assaults, according to the Associated Press, while Israel says more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, and at least 199 others have been taken hostage since the Hamas militant group's surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

What Israel Has Said

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a statement after the hospital attack saying that it was the result of a failed rocket strike by Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian faction fighting alongside Hamas.

"An analysis of IDF operational systems indicates that a barrage of rockets was fired by terrorists in Gaza, passing in close proximity to the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza at the time it was hit," the IDF said in a statement.

"Intelligence from multiple sources we have in our hands indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital in Gaza," the statement added.

This was reinforced at a press conference on Wednesday morning, when Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Islamic Jihad had fired a "barrage of around 10 rockets" from a nearby cemetery.

Hagari alleged that Hamas had understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket but "decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened," saying it "went as far as inflating the numbers of casualties."

He also said that there was no direct hit to the hospital, adding that "the only location damage is outside the hospital in the parking lot, where we can see signs of burning...no cratering and no structural damage to nearby buildings, as opposed to any aerial munition which would have been of different nature.

"We would have seen craters and structural damage to the buildings, both of which haven't been identified in this incident. The size of the damage we see here is due to the warhead of the Islamic Jihad rocket, but most of the rocket's propellant is still evident due to the short flight of the rocket because the launch failed."

Hagari said elsewhere that no such Israeli attacks occurred next to the hospital, nor did the damage "fit any ammunition with the air force," saying in a briefing that it was common for rockets that are fired at Israel to land short and fall inside Gaza.

"During this war, we have counted approximately 450 rockets that misfired and fell inside Gaza," he added.

The IDF released audio that it claims is of a conversation between Hamas militants realizing that the explosion was caused by the "Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the audio.

Other content provided by Israeli authorities has been taken offline.

On Tuesday, two official Israeli accounts on X, formerly Twitter, posted and later deleted a video that claimed to show the hospital explosion.

The video was deleted after Aric Toler, a journalist on the visual investigations team at The New York Times, disputed the accuracy of the footage due to time stamps on the video.

What Hamas Has Said

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has estimated at least 500 people were killed in the strike.

A Hamas official told Newsweek on Wednesday that the group is collecting evidence that proves Israeli responsibility.

"Hamas has a committee that collects all evidence of the Israeli occupation's responsibility for the massacres in Gaza and the Baptist Hospital massacre as well," Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said.

"There is a lot of evidence, eyewitnesses and videos from Hamas about the occupation committing the Baptist Hospital massacre and the wreckage of rockets. Hamas will publish all the evidence to the world that confirms this massacre was committed intentionally and will present it to international jurisdictions," he added, though he did not offer a timeframe.

"The Baptist Hospital massacre was committed with Israeli guided missiles and came hours after the Israeli Shin Bet contacted hospital officials more than once and threatened to bomb the hospital."

A Telegram Channel associated with Hamas' official online presence also released a statement on Wednesday, calling the blast "one of the most horrific massacres committed in the modern era."

What the U.S. Has Said

In a statement published by the White House on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he was "outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, and the terrible loss of life that resulted."

Biden continued: "Immediately upon hearing this news, I spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and have directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened. The United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict and we mourn the patients, medical staff and other innocents killed or wounded in this tragedy."

Later, at a press conference with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Biden repeated that he was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion but that Israel was not to blame.

"Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you [Israel]," Biden said. "But there's a lot of people out there not sure, so we have to overcome a lot of things."

Hamas, Biden said, has "committed evil atrocities that make ISIS look somewhat rational."

He added: "We have to also bear in mind that Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people and has brought them only suffering."

At another conference later Wednesday, Biden elaborated on his earlier comments, appearing to side with Israel's analysis of the explosion, saying, "Based on the information we have seen today, it appears it was the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza."

Biden did not say what information he had seen or how the U.S. had reached its conclusion. White House spokesperson John Kirby said to reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that Biden had directed the national security team to gather as much information and context as possible.

"We all want to know how this could have happened," Kirby said.

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.