Le Monde owes its readers an explanation of how it handled the deadly explosion that occurred in a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, October 17th.
That evening, at 7:18 p.m., Le Monde picked up an AFP story reporting on the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, attributed to the Israeli army, which initially killed 200 people. The text mentioned the fact that the Israeli authorities were conducting checks and questioned the accuracy of this information. This publication was the subject of a headline on the front page of our website and an alert, like the major media outlets on the planet.
At 9:57 p.m., we reported a formal denial from the Israeli army, which attributed this explosion to the firing of a rocket by Islamic Jihad, a Hamas-aligned organization. As the evening progressed, doubts and contradictions about this explosion mounted. We reported this both in our ongoing coverage of the conflict on our website and on the front page of the next day’s newspaper (newspaper of Thursday, October 19), which attributed the title more broadly to “the agony of the people.” In Gaza, there were indications that “several hundred civilians were killed” in the hospital explosion – the unprovable number of victims is currently estimated by American intelligence services at between 100 and 300 victims. We also reported on the Hamas allegations and the Israeli denial.
On Thursday, October 19, we published an investigation on our video service that, without providing formal evidence, brings together images and chronological elements, none of which support the thesis of IDF responsibility. This work complements the work of other editorials and numerous expert opinions that tend to show that the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital was caused by the impact of a rocket fired from Gaza by a Palestinian armed group, without any official evidence to prove this .
The investigation into the origins of this tragedy continues, but these consistent elements lead us today to believe that we lacked caution in reporting on this Hamas explosion on October 17th.
Precautionary measures are all the more necessary as we unfortunately do not have the opportunity to check on site. Access to this area is effectively banned by the Israeli army and there is no international press. Le Monde’s editorial team can only collect testimonies due to poor telephone or internet connections, dependent on electricity from Israel, and from civilians under constant threat of bombing.
After assessing the dangers, it is fundamentally the responsibility of the media whether or not to send their reporters to a war zone. This is not the case this time.
In order to take into account this situation, which we deplore, we will regularly point out in our publications that certain information from the Gaza Strip, in particular reports of human casualties, cannot be verified. To clarify the origin of these reports, we have also decided to change the way we present them and now indicate that they come from the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health, which is “administered by Hamas.”
In the coming days, further changes may be made to our practices regarding this conflict between Israel and Hamas, which is not just another episode in the tensions that regularly inflame this region of the world.
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Current events since Hamas’s atrocities during the October 7 terrorist operation are part of a merciless war that is expected to last a long time, bringing with it tragedies and numerous shockwaves. We owe it to your loyalty and trust to respond to you with the most complete and reliable editorial reporting possible.