Gaza hospital attack: US is still assessing likely casualty figures following Gaza hospital attack.
Washington:
The US intelligence community has estimated that 100 to 300 people were likely killed in the attack on Gaza’s Ahli Arab hospital, according to excerpts from a document seen by AFP on Thursday – far fewer than the nearly 500 deaths estimated by Hamas health authorities had reported. -ruled enclave that was originally described.
An unclassified US intelligence assessment, provided to AFP by a Capitol Hill source, puts the number of people killed in hospital on Tuesday evening at the “low end of the spectrum of 100 to 300”.
“We are still assessing the likely numbers of casualties and our assessment may evolve, but this death toll still reflects a staggering loss of life,” the document said.
“The United States takes the deaths of all civilians seriously and is working intensively to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” the document said.
The attack took place around 5pm GMT on Tuesday, when Gaza’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike had hit the Christian-run Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza City.
Officials in Gaza have said at least 471 people were killed in the blast, with more than 300 injured.
Hamas has blamed the killings on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military has blamed a failed rocket fired by another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad.
According to the US intelligence document, “Israel is unlikely to have bombed the hospital in the Gaza Strip,” and the United States “continues to work to confirm whether the explosion was the result of a failed PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) rocket.”
The document also says there was “only minor structural damage to the hospital,” with “no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters.”
AFP correspondents on the scene saw dozens of bodies, while medics and civilians recovered the bodies wrapped in white cloth, blankets or black plastic bags.
Bloodstains and torched cars could be seen in the hospital courtyard.
Images of the hospital after the strike, published by the satellite monitoring group Maxar, showed the hospital buildings appeared largely intact.
Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus also disputed the Hamas-led ministry’s figures, asking: “Where are all the bodies?”
Hamas has rejected Israel’s position, saying its “outrageous lies do not deceive anyone.”
The estimated death toll in the United States is higher than the 50 people a senior European intelligence source previously told AFP he believed had been killed.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has said there is “no excuse to hit a hospital full of civilians” in Gaza, but has not assigned blame for the blast.
Gaza has been hit by a brutal barrage of Israeli fire in retaliation for a Hamas militant attack on October 7, which Israel says killed at least 1,400 people, most of whom were civilians.
Israeli bombings have since killed at least 3,785 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
Tens of thousands of families have sought refuge from the bombardment in and around Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
