combatants in Gaza fired rocket fire against Israel and towards AlAhli Hospital 44 seconds before a Explosion in health center kills at least 100 peopleaccording to visual analysis by The Washington Post.
Using video provided by Israeli television station Keshet 12 News, the Post was able to determine the geolocation of the launch site at a point southwest of the hospital in Gaza City, roughly corresponding to the launch site of a rocket that reportedly malfunctioned and fell into the ground. Hospital grounds. Experts say rockets from this dam could reach the hospital at the time of the explosion.
Analysis of this and other videos, as well as expert review of images from the explosion site, provide circumstantial evidence that can support Israel and the US government’s claim. US that an uncontrolled rocket fired by a Palestinian armed group was responsible for the October 17 explosion.
People inspect the area of AlAhli Hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in an explosion in Gaza City on October 18, 2023. Photo: Mohammed AlMasri / Portal
At the same time, there is no visual evidence that missiles hit hospital facilities, and the images analyzed by the Post do not exclude the possibility that an unregistered projectile fired from another point hit the site.
None of the more than two dozen experts interviewed by the Post could say with certainty what type of weapon hit the hospital or who fired it. But munitions experts agreed that the damage to the hospital was similar to that of a rocket attack. They said the damage was neither that of an airstrike, which would have caused much greater destruction, nor that of an artillery strike, which would have left significant shrapnel and probably would not have caused the huge fireball captured in the videos.
Additionally, the Post’s analysis found that a revealing video filmed and broadcast by the Al Jazeera television network, which was cited by the Israeli and American governments as evidence that a missile misfired and landed on the hospital grounds was a projectile instead shows that it was fired from a location miles away in Israel, near an apparent antiaircraft battery in Israel Iron Dome System. Experts said the widely circulated video likely showed an Iron Dome interceptor colliding with a missile about three miles from the hospital and was likely unrelated to the explosion at the health facility.
The U.S. National Intelligence Directorate declined to comment on the Post’s findings, including the geolocation of the possible launch of an interceptor missile inside Israel. A spokesman said American intelligence had “high confidence” that the explosion at the hospital was caused by a missile fired by “Palestinian militants,” based on intercepted phone calls, an analysis of the hospital’s rubble and four publicly available videos. According to the spokesperson, Al Jazeera’s video was one of four clips analyzed, but the representative did not disclose which others were involved.
Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said Israel did not conduct wiretaps on the dates surrounding the explosion but did not immediately respond to the Post’s visual analysis.
The lack of direct evidence has made it difficult to conclusively prove who fired the munitions that exploded at AlAhli Hospital, highlighting the limitations of attempting to remotely investigate incidents in war zones without access to the field.
Hamas attributed the explosion at the hospital to an attack by Israel, while the Israeli military said the blast was the result of a “misfired” rocket from Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group. Gaza’s health ministry said 471 people had died, while a published U.S. intelligence analysis said the death toll was “likely at the lower end of the spectrum of 100 to 300.”
Rockets fired from Gaza often have defects. The Israel Defense Forces said last week that Palestinian armed groups had fired more than 6,900 rockets at Israel since the start of the current conflict and that at least 550 of them had failed. An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on whether his country’s armed forces have used munitions classified as rockets since the start of the war.
The hospital explosion triggered the biggest wave of anger in the Middle East since the Hamas invasion on October 7, which Israel said killed 1,400 people and injured 5,400. The incursion led to a campaign of Israeli attacks in Gaza that killed at least 7,028 people and injured more than 18,400, according to the enclave’s health ministry. The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority canceled diplomatic meetings with President Joe Biden after the hospital disaster, and protesters took to the streets in several countries to express anger at Israel and the United States over the deaths.
Neither Israel nor Egypt, which together have effectively blockaded the Gaza Strip for more than 16 years, have allowed foreign journalists into the enclave since the start of the current war, making precise analysis of the blast site impossible. The next day, Palestinian journalists entered the hospital grounds and took photos, but none of the images showed clear signs of weapons, evidence that is crucial to this type of investigation. Hamas told the Post that it had collected the shrapnel and that “they will soon be shown to the world,” but also told other media that no trace of the munitions that hit the hospital remained.
The rocket fire was fired into Gaza shortly after 6:59 p.m. local time. And it immediately caught the attention of people seeking to prove responsibility for the hospital explosion. Television channel Keshet 12 News showed several clips of its footage from the balcony of a property in the Israeli town of Netivot where the launch was recorded. The station provided The Post with a 94second clip that included all of the footage.
A second video from a surveillance camera installed in the city of Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, that broadcasts live images from the Gaza Strip captured the same launch. Both videos had time codes, which the post found to be correct.
The videos showed the launch from two different points, about 65 kilometers apart. By geolocating the landmarks visible in both videos, the Post triangulated the origin of the rocket fire at a location 3 miles southwest of AlAhli Hospital, on the outskirts of Gaza City.
The location roughly corresponded to the launch site indicated on an Israel Defense Forces “radar log” map released on October 18. It showed what the Israeli military said was the location of the shooting and the trajectory of rockets fired from there that flew over the hospital. The Post’s analysis found that the rocket fire was heading northeast toward the hospital.
Experts say Palestinian rockets are simple, have no guidance devices and are equipped with fuel to power their engines.
Munich rocket and missile expert Markus Schiller estimates that it would take 25 to 45 seconds for a Kassam rocket used by Palestinian groups to reach the hospital from the launch site, depending on factors such as the angle of launch.
Ferenc DalnokiVeress, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a scientist at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said his findings agreed with Schiller’s and that missiles took about 26 to 37 seconds to reach the hospital.
The rocket barrage recorded in the videos, which included more than a dozen visible rockets, begins 44 seconds before the explosion and lasts 14 seconds, meaning many of the rockets could have reached the hospital in time before the explosion. There was no visual evidence of anyone failing and falling.
Video taken from a building about 150 meters southeast of the hospital showed the sharp whistle of the projectile gaining speed just before the explosion.
The Post sent this video and other images capturing the moment of the explosion to several audio forensic experts. Professor Rob Maher of Montana State University explained that the frequency of the increasing volume of the falling projectile suggests that it was accelerating.
The acceleration could indicate that the projectile is falling vertically and gaining speed under gravity, he said, adding that, according to acoustic analysis, this is more consistent with a faulty rocket falling from the sky than with a horizontally moving object .
The impact on the facilities of AlAhli Hospital caused a large explosion that triggered a fireball.
Marc Garlasco, a former U.S. Defense Department damage analyst and U.N. war crimes investigator, said such an explosion would require a “significant” amount of explosive charges and accelerants, similar to those carried by a crashed missile, before it closes on the target approaches.
Flames engulfed the hospital’s courtyard, where hundreds of people reportedly sought shelter to avoid airstrikes. A video taken immediately after the explosion shows dozens of bodies scattered across the yard.
Photos show members of the Palestinian police’s explosive neutralization unit examining the crater opened by that night’s explosion. The next morning, journalists and Palestinian civilians began publishing videos and photos of the scene. There was no trace of the ammunition that caused the explosion in the images.
Photos showed more than a dozen burned cars in the hospital parking lot, including one that overturned on impact.
The buildings surrounding the courtyard sustained relatively little damage, with broken windows and flying bricks.
A small crater with a diameter of about 90 centimeters was formed in the parking lot between two lawns where civilians were seeking shelter. A spraylike splinter pattern could be seen on the ground in one direction, but experts disagreed about its significance.
Palestinians carry belongings and leave the alAhli hospital in Gaza City, which they used as a shelter, on Wednesday, October 18, 2023. Photo: Abed Khaled / APPInjured Palestinians at Ahli Arab Hospital in alShifa Hospital, after Israeli aerial strikes in Gaza City, in the center of the Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023. Photo: Abed Khaled / AP
Parts of a metal and concrete fence near the crater were broken and bent, and nearby trees appeared to be charred.
More than half a dozen experts who independently analyzed images from the accident scene said the lack of major blast damage, such as: B. destroyed buildings, and the relatively small size and shape of the crater rule out the possibility of an attack of the type carried out by Israel in other parts of Gaza since October 7.
“I can say categorically that this was not an airstrike,” Garlasco said.
Garlasco noted a large amount of what he classified as “local thermal damage,” destruction by fire, which he said was unusual in air strikes. According to the expert, such a scene could rather be reconciled with a munition that “contains too much fuel” crashing prematurely and igniting it with its explosive warhead. This would result in a flash fire that would not affect the construction site over a large area but would cause concentrated damage, Garlasco said.
The size of the crater and the intensity of the explosion were consistent with the impact of a 155mm artillery shell stored in the Israeli arsenal, said security adviser and former British Army artillery officer Chris CobbSmith. But other weapons cause the same damage, and an artillery shell would not have produced the fireball seen in videos of the explosion, he said.
On October 14, just three days before the hospital explosion, health center management said its facilities had been hit by another projectile, and video taken inside the facility showed a 155millimeter signal projectile on the ground a case with a large hole in the wall. Signal projectiles are not fired directly at targets, but rather fall from the sky via parachutes to signal, illuminate areas, or mark targets as the projectile sinks to the ground. The projectile landed in the ultrasound room, wrote the man who posted the video, an Anglican pastor who works with the diocese attached to the hospital.
Conricus, the Israeli military spokesman, said the ammunition found on October 14 looked like a 155millimeter signal grenade, but the hospital was not attacked.
“The hospital was certainly not intentionally hit,” Conricus said. “If an artillery shell hit, it was probably the result of a fall or a miss after firing, but it was definitely not aimed at the hospital.” The Israeli military did not have a 155millimeter rocket on October 17, the day of the explosion. Grenades were fired into the hospital grounds, he said.
A misinterpreted video
The Israeli and American governments and some media outlets pointed to a video shot and broadcast by Al Jazeera on the night of the explosion that initially appeared to show a possible missile flying near the hospital and seconds before the explosion exploded in the air in the hospital. The Israeli military cited the video in several interviews. U.S. intelligence officials said their analysts also relied on that video.
But after analyzing several videos, the Post determined that the projectile in question had actually been fired from a point inside Israel, near a likely Iron Dome missile defense line, and experts said it was likely an interceptor missile The hospital explosion had nothing to do with it.
About 20 seconds after the rocket barrage was fired, a surveillance camera in a Tel Aviv suburb captured a single projectile rising to high altitude and flying east, and video of the same launch was captured by a cameraman from the roof of a building in Gaza City .
This satellite image, courtesy of Maxar Technologies, taken on October 19, 2023, shows the aftermath of an October 17, 2023 attack on AlAhli Hospital and the surrounding area in Gaza City. Photo: Maxar Technologies via AFPDemonstrators clash with security forces in front of the US Embassy in Lebanon on October 18, 2023. Photo: BBAS SALMAN/EFEMDemonstrators shout slogans during a protest in support of the Palestinian people after the hospital explosion in the Gaza Strip, on October 18, 2023. Photo: MOHAMED HOSSAM / EFE
The Post used these two videos to triangulate the projectile’s origin, locating it at a point inside Israel about 4 kilometers from the Gaza fence and confirming the location with a video from the news channel Keshet 12. The location of origin was initially determined by independent sources Investigators who published their findings on the social networks X and Discord.
The projectile’s origin was near an Israeli military camp, satellite images show. Experts said the site recorded by Planet Labs on October 20 has features consistent with known examples of Iron Dome rocket batteries, including blast walls mounted right next to the launchers.
Approximately 15 seconds after launch, the projectile fired from near the alleged Iron Dome facilities exploded in midair after changing direction and arcing to the west.
Five experts who analyzed the videos told the Post that based on its behavior and where it was launched, the projectile looked like a Tamir interceptor missile fired from Israel’s Iron Dome system.
“What we see is an interceptor missile,” DalnokiVeress said. “These interceptors continually change course to correct the expected intercept point in time and space.”
Unlike unguided missiles fired by Palestinian armed groups that follow ballistic trajectories, this missile’s meandering trajectory before explosion showed the “distinctly nonballistic trajectory expected of a Tamir interceptor,” DalnokiVeress said.
Justin Bronk, a senior fellow at the British defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute, interpreted the recording differently, writing in an email that the images showed “a single visible rocket engine showing a sudden and violent change in course that was consistent “with a control failure on the ground, followed by a shower of sparks a few seconds later, indicating a structural failure in flight.”
A spokesman for the U.S. National Intelligence Directorate told the Post that several videos showed “a rocket or rocket likely to fail in flight about 10 seconds after launch” and that the explosion at AlAhli Hospital shortly afterward ” “Almost…” certainly erupted from the warhead that fell.” The spokesman did not name the exact place of origin of the projectile in Gaza.
The five experts agreed that there was no evidence linking the likely interception to the hospital explosion and that the two events were probably unrelated.
The explosion and fireball hit the hospital grounds seven seconds after the apparent interceptor missile exploded in the sky. The Post determined the location of the suspected interception blast by locating it at a point inside Israel, about a mile from the Gaza fence and about 3.5 miles east of the hospital.
The seven seconds between the explosion in the sky and the explosion in the hospital miles away would not be enough for the debris from the interceptor rocket to reach the hospital, Schiller said. Any object that fell in the air in the explosion would have to be thrown at more than 500 meters per second (supersonic speed) to reach the hospital in that time, which was “virtually impossible,” he said. According to Schiller, the explosion was most likely caused by an unrelated missile that malfunctioned and “hit the hospital facilities just seconds after the interception event.” / TRANSLATION BY AUGUSTO CALIL