Hamas version of Gaza hospital attack appears not to hold water

Palestine called the attack on Al-Ahli Al-Maadani Hospital in the Gaza Strip an act of "military massacre" conducted by Israel. In turn, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) conducted an investigation into the bombing of the hospital in Gaza and presented evidence of its non-involvement in the incident. US President Joe Biden said that the hospital could have been hit by a stray rocket that was fired from Gaza.

Hamas accused Israel of launching the rocket attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. The radical Palestinian movement said that Israeli security forces threatened hospital staff to blow up the building and then launched a guided missile attack at the hospital building.

Hamas vowed to release evidence proving that Israel was indeed involved in the strike that killed 471 people, as the enclave's health ministry said.

However, experts found inconsistencies in the Hamas version of events.

The scale of destruction appears to be too insignificant for the weapons that the IDF used during the bombing.

Nathan Ruser, an officer at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that IDF drone footage did not show significant structural damage to most of the vehicles after the impact.

Only three cars had the signs of such damage, whereas other cars located more than 10-15 meters away appear to be practically intact.

The footage also showed that there was practically no crater visible at the site of the rocket impact, whereas the damage that was caused to the building approximately 20 meters from the impact site was too insignificant, the specialist said.

The scale of the damage is consistent with a small impact with a large amount of flammable accelerant that likely caused most of the fire and very little structural damage within a very narrow radius, the expert concluded.

He compared the footage of the hospital to other airstrikes in Gaza that left larger craters, more concrete dust and caused much more damage.

According to Michael Clarke, former director of the Royal Defence Studies Institute (RUSI), the rocket attack on the hospital was carried out from inside the Gaza Strip. The attack took place because of a technical failure in the use of the Hamas arsenal, the specialist believes.

Initial images from the scene looked devastating, but photo and video materials revealed in the morning looked "somewhat less dramatic".

"There's a crater which is not particularly big. There are vehicles that were absolutely completely destroyed by the missile, but other vehicles were burned out. This doesn't look like a huge explosion. One wonders how the death toll could be quite so high if people were all camped out in the car park," he said.

Fragments of the rocket that hit the hospital could prove Israel's non-involvement in the missile strike. However, the rocket debris remain at the disposal of Hamas, and the movement will not make public evidence against itself. At the same time, Hamas may try to bring fragments of an Israeli rocket to mislead people, Clarke noted.

Researchers from the OSINTtechnical project drew attention to footage from the chapel at Al Ahli Hospital. Several stained glass windows in the chapel were shattered as a result of the explosion, but the rest of the room appears intact.

The project posted a picture of the funnel on the hospital parking lot. This is a 1x1 meter funnel about 30 centimetres deep.

A CNN source said that the collected evidence suggested it was a ground explosion rather than an airstrike.

The analysis of the damage led US intelligence officials to conclude that the attack on the hospital was a failed missile launch.