(Paris) Was the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza hit by Israeli fire? Was he the victim of a faulty rocket fired from the Palestinian side? Were civilians killed by the dozens, or by the hundreds? The analysts interviewed at the end of the week by AFP did not definitively rule out any scenario after this tragedy which occurred Tuesday evening and for which Israel and Hamas deny each other responsibility.
But the experts interviewed by AFP are generally skeptical regarding the hypothesis of a classic air strike, such as the Israeli army carried out for example on Gaza in retaliation for the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 on Israel.
An analysis reinforced Friday evening by the French Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM), which estimated that “nothing allows us to say” that it was “an Israeli strike”.
The AFP investigated by interviewing weapons specialists, analyzing authenticated images and cross-checking them with various available testimonies.
What do the available images show?
A video taken from Gaza by the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, which AFP was able to authenticate, shows the exact moment when an explosion occurred at the Ahli Arab hospital site, Tuesday at 6:59 p.m. local time (3:59 p.m. GMT). Other videos from surveillance cameras on the Israeli side also show this scene.
Having gone viral, this video shows the departure towards the sky of a luminous projectile which suddenly disappears in mid-flight in a large flash. Less than ten seconds later, two explosions occurred on the ground, including one on the site of this hospital located in the north of Gaza, as AFP was able to confirm using geolocation tools.
Other videos, broadcast online after the explosion and authenticated by AFP, show several cars burning in a parking lot in the center of the hospital, a pile of debris on the ground as well as a large number of bodies lying by land, including those of several children.
Videos taken the next day by AFP at the hospital show charred cars in the parking lot. Next to the parking lot, a lawn strewn with clothes and personal belongings and stained with blood in places, seeming to indicate that people were camping there. There are also numerous broken windows in the surrounding buildings. And on the ground there are probable traces of impact, including at least one small crater.
PHOTO MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES BY REUTERS
Satellite image shows site the day after the explosion
According to Gaza authorities, the site housed hundreds of wounded and sick people, and civilians who had come to take refuge there.
“We were operating, there was a loud explosion and the ceiling fell on the operating room. It’s a massacre,” said Dr.r Ghassan Abu Sittah, from the NGO Doctors Without Borders.
“People were scattered outside in the gardens and under the trees. Suddenly everything went black, with bodies and blood everywhere,” Mohammed Qriq, a Gaza resident, told AFP.
“For fear of bombings we came here [à l’hôpital]. We felt a rocket hit it, the whole place was bombed. We headed to other places nearby. The bodies were in pieces, old people, children, women,” Waleed, another resident, also said.
What possible causes?
On social networks, Internet users clash to determine the cause of the explosion, some defending the Israeli theory of a defective rocket fired from Gaza whose debris fell on the hospital, others questioning a strike of the Israeli Air Force.
Analysts interviewed by AFP remain cautious and do not definitively rule out any scenario. However, they consider it unlikely that a classic Israeli strike would be involved in this tragedy, expressing surprise in particular at the limited damage to the buildings surrounding the parking lot and pointing out the absence of a large crater as certain Israeli weapons can cause.
REUTERS PHOTO
At this point, very few images show the interior of the buildings
“It is difficult to make the link between the strong explosion on the ground [visible sur la vidéo d’Al-Jazeera, NDLR] and the slight damage observed at the hospital. It looks like the hospital itself was not affected,” underlines Héloïse Fayet, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), noting that most of the damage observed is in the parking lot, the adjoining lawns and building facades.
At this stage, however, very few images show the interior of the buildings.
“The most likely hypothesis is the fall of a projectile on the cars that were there and an explosion in the gasoline tank of several of these cars,” analyzes this researcher specializing in geopolitics and the armed forces at Middle East.
The visible damage “is consistent with the hypothesis of engine pieces, for example, of a rocket, which fall in a ballistic alignment, projecting debris, flaming materials, and creating a blast effect”, estimates Joseph Henrotin for his part. , editor-in-chief of the magazine Defense and international security (DSI).
“There is damage to the buildings. We see torn tiles, broken windows at the hospital and impacts in the walls.” However, “no building is hit directly” whereas “if you target a building with the ammunition and targeting capabilities available to the Israelis, normally you hit this building,” explains this expert. According to him, the impact zones are characterized by “very small craters […] What blew up there is not huge” and “does not correspond to the weapons used by the Israelis”.
“The crater visible on the ground is not very big. For me, it is not a bomb dropped by a plane but more a mortar or something like that,” points out a French military source, a good expert on explosives, who does not wish to be identified.
“There are quite a few rockets that have firing incidents,” a senior European intelligence official told AFP on Wednesday evening. “Israel probably did not do that,” according to the “serious leads” of intelligence available to its services.
“Military grade equipment would have done infinitely more damage. We see it when Israel bombs, they destroy buildings in a single strike,” analyzes Xavier Tytelman, aeronautical-defense consultant and digital editor-in-chief of the magazine. Air and Cosmos.
Could the hospital parking lot then have been the target of a shot – intentional or not – by the Israeli army? “Even if it was a mistake and they had targeted there by mistake, there is no Israeli bomb that does that. An effect of a JDAM bomb [utilisant un guidage GPS, NDLR] is incomparable with what we saw there,” said Mr. Tytelman.
Could a smaller ammunition have been used? A micro-munition dropped for example by drone, a cannon shot from an aircraft or a missile shot from a helicopter? Without completely ruling out such scenarios, the analysts interviewed by AFP consider them to be incompatible with the available images and therefore unlikely.
The French Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM) – a rare thing – spoke directly on the subject on Friday, describing at the site of the explosion a “hole” – and not a crater – of approximately one meter by 75 cm and 30 to 40 cm deep.
However, “it takes around five kilos of explosives to produce this effect, certainly less than ten kilos”, explains the DRM, estimating therefore that the hypothesis of an Israeli bomb or missile is not possible because the minimum load of this type of weapon is very much higher.
A device of this kind – bomb or missile – would have formed a much larger crater, judges French military intelligence, estimating on the other hand that a charge of five kilos is consistent for rockets acquired or manufactured by the Palestinians.
“The most likely hypothesis is a Palestinian rocket which exploded with a charge of around 5 kilos,” judges the DRM.
Mutual accusations
Regardless, Palestinians and Israelis blame each other for the shooting.
“There was no army fire from land, sea or air that hit the hospital,” General Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, told the press. released maps and an audio recording that it presents as a conversation between two Hamas members discussing the responsibility of Islamic Jihad, another armed group active in the Gaza Strip.
On the X network, an Israeli influencer, reputed to be close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nevertheless announced after the explosion that “the Israeli army [avait] hit a Hamas terrorist base in a Gaza hospital”, before backpedaling shortly after claiming to have based his message on “erroneous” press articles.
An Israeli army spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, repeated in recent days that it was “not an Israeli bomb because there is no crater in the photos.”
Islamic Jihad on Wednesday called the Israeli accusations “lies”, saying that it was a bomb dropped by an Israeli army plane that caused the tragedy.
“This horrible massacre was perpetrated with the help of an American military arsenal of which only the occupier [Israël, NDLR] has,” Hamas said on Wednesday.
Uncertain number of victims
AFP photos and videos show dozens of bodies in sheets, blankets or body bags.
According to Hamas, the explosion killed at least 471 people displaced by the conflict who were sheltering within the hospital grounds.
A senior European intelligence official, interviewed by AFP, estimated the number of deaths from this strike at “a few dozen”.
An American intelligence note, extracts of which AFP was able to consult on Thursday, places the human toll “probably at the bottom of a range between 100 and 300” deaths.