Researcher Explains Why Israel Might Not Be Behind Gaza Hospital Attack

A Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson blamed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for a strike on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, claiming that more than 500 civilians were killed.

However, the IDF denied these allegations, alleging that debris from a misfired rocket from Gaza, belonging to the terrorist organisation Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), hit Al-Ahli Hospital.

They released aerial videos and images of the hospital compound, both before and after the incident.

In the aftermath of this incident, the Jordanian government made the decision to cancel United States President Joe Biden's scheduled visit to the Middle East, during which he was slated to hold meetings with various Arab leaders, as well as a visit to Israel. Subsequently, President Biden has arrived in Israel.

Amidst the ongoing exchange of accusations, an open-source intelligence (OSINT) researcher named Nathan Ruser, using the handle @Nrg8000, took to the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to explain why Israel may not be the party responsible for the hospital's attack.

Nathan shared photographic evidence of the parking lot at Al-Ahli Hospital, which sustained the most significant damage.

His observations highlight that only three cars in the parking lot display distinct signs of kinetic or structural damage, with the rest showing burn-related damage.

Nathan states that vehicles within 10 metres of the impact site remain largely undamaged, and buildings positioned 20 metres away exhibit minimal harm.

The OSINT researcher says that unlike the standard IDF airstrikes, there is a noticeable absence of a crater, save for the three severely damaged cars and the others scorched by the incident.

Nathan further compared the observed damage with the imagery released by the IDF, suggesting that the damage to the roof, located 30-45 metres away from the impact site, appears consistent with damage caused by an object breaking apart midair.

However, he emphasises that these observations do not conclusively prove that this damage resulted from debris from a misfired PIJ rocket fired from inside Gaza.

He also drew a parallel between the damage sustained by the Israeli city of Ashkelon from Hamas rocket attacks, suggesting that the damage to the hospital's parking lot is akin to the damage caused by the fuel accelerant from the rockets.

Notably, the photos from Ashkelon show a lack of cratering, similar to the situation in the hospital attack.

Contrasting this with Israeli air-strikes, Nathan states that, "Israeli airstrikes in Gaza tend to leave a much larger crater and cause a lot more damage, they also almost always leave big deposits of concrete dust after striking a structure."

To counter the claim that more than 500 civilians were killed in this explosion, Nathan compared the area of the parking lot where cars burned (identified as 228 square metres) with the damage resulting from truck bomb attacks in Baghdad (350 killed), Mogadishu (500 killed), and another attack in Mogadishu (125 killed).

He states, "the claimed casualty count of 500+ seems widely inconsistent with the damage we can see."

Swarajya could not independently verify the claims made by the researcher.