I’ve been seeing a lot of news stories about him meeting with leaders in the ME since the crisis broke out. Below is a link to summary article from nbcnews. It is a little more glowing then I am comfortable with, but I don’t think he has been sitting around.
GeoConfirmed (and opensource intelligence in general) is truly a remarkable movement that I hope helps to hold armed forces around the world much more accountable going forward.
Additional information collected by them seems to show that your suggestion of a fire caused by unburnt fuel may very well be correct.
- the explosion was in the parking lot or yard of the hospital
- it looks like it was less of a big concussive blast and more of a fireball
- the buildings are all still standing, which they wouldn’t be if they were hit by a precision bomb or if a pile of munitions inside went off
- IDF released drone footage which GeoConfirmed sources agree shows evidence of this kind of explosion - no crater, shape of the burn marks, etc.
There is video on Reddit that pretty clearly shows the hospital was hit by a malfunctioning rocket. The rocket appear to break up in flight and a few seconds later there are two explosions on the ground. One small explosion which is probably the engine and then a larger explosion a short distance away that is probably the warhead.
Hamas is claiming several hundred people were killed in this incident. Is this a credible tally for a parking lot fire?
If the fireball extended into a hospital full of people who can’t run away, sure?
If they were overrun with crowding to the point where they had a bunch of people packed into the courtyard outside, where a massive fireball engulfed the entire open area between the buildings? That could definitely kill quite a few people.
I’ll also note that we have heard everything from 200 to 500 casualties so we don’t really have a solid sense of what the tally actually is yet.
The fact that a bunch of newspapers uncritically reported headlines like “Israeli airstrike kills 500” burying the “according to a Hamas spokesperson” 3 paragraphs in is absolutely unreal to me. Just complete journalistic negligence.
I’d hope that those American politicians who came out and criticized Israel for this tragedy before they had their facts straight have the integrity to issue corrections.
Likewise the beheaded babies stories. The journalism has been atrocious.
All good points. Thinking about it some more, it’s not hard to imagine a Gaza City hospital being overrun with casualties, with each casualty having one or more family members milling around outside.
People were taking refuge there - I’ve read reports of up to 5,000 - because they thought it would be a safe place. There’s lots of bedding in the courtyard, so there were presumably lots of people camping out there.
Pictures of the blast site show that the ground is scorched, the cars have burnt, but there aren’t really craters. And all the buildings are fine - the hospital itself doesn’t appear to have been damaged.
I think a bunch of people were just camping out in the parking lot, exactly.
Apparently as many as 1 in 3 of the rockets fired out of Gaza land within the strip. Obviously, it’s not usually this dramatic, but considering Iron Dome and the density of Gaza, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Palestinian militant* launched rockets kill more Palestinians than Israelis.
Stupid… futile… tragic. For the sake of both Palestinians and Israelis, Gaza cannot remain under militant control.
*I’m not saying Hamas because my understanding is that this rocket was launched by a different group, Islamic Jihad. Again this is according to independent “Open Source Intelligence” groups who found video of IJP launching rockets just before the strike.
Starting here–there’s nothing Hamas claims that should be taken at face value. They may be right, but only in the way that Trump is sometimes right.
It’s bizarre and macabre and awful that I’m hoping this was a militant fuckup, but it’s increasingly looking that way to me, and it’s a huge relief.
My initial reaction was that the lower estimates of 200 are pretty believable if people were sheltering there from the blast and packed into the parking lot.
However… I won’t post a link because the images are a little graphic (very zoomed out but you can see bodies); but OSINT sources appear to have found pictures from both before the blast (showing how many makeshift shelters or beds were built) and after (showing dead bodies) that lead them to estimate 30-50 dead, although they caution it will take months for a full report.
This OSINT community is seriously the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Did anything like this exist when the US invaded Iraq/Afghanistan? I’d assume not, the proliferation of cameras and photo sharing hadn’t happened yet. I think this could have a major impact on the way democracies fight wars. (Or we could see some major tests of how far Freedom of Speech in the US will go the next time the US fights a war).
If the number of dead is actually that inflated, my guess is that Hamas knew right away that it was an internal failed rocket and they inflated the number under “big lie” logic.
How many people (here, on Reddit, on Twitter, etc) have I seen who said something along the lines of, “a failed rocket, yeah right, how could a failed improvised rocket kill 500 people?”.
My thinking would be the opposite - that if Hamas deliberately inflated the number, it would be because they thought Israel was responsible.
Personally, if Doctors Without Borders is saying a whole bunch of people in their hospital just got blown up, what I believe is that a whole bunch of people in a hospital just got blown up, and I don’t really see any meaningful distinction between a hundred and five hundred. And I think anybody fixated on that kind of stuff is paying attention to sources I disregard out of hand. It’s not like this would be the first time there was a massive PR campaign that successfully obscured the details of a war crime. Anybody who feels their level of certainty is increasing is getting sold a bill of goods.
The traditional way to use the word casualties in reporting is a total of dead and wounded. It’s easy to take a report like “there are many dead, 500 casualties” and equate it with 500 dead.
Smartphones with cameras weren’t really a thing during the hottest part of OIF/OEF. There is some video but not nearly the amount you get now. There is a page on reddit just for combat footage. There is easily 10 times more first hand video coming out of Ukraine than there was in all previous conflicts combined. It’s a problem for modern militaries. Sure it can be used as propaganda. More importantly is the signals intelligence aspect. Not only can 12 year olds figure out the geolocation of pictures and videos, enemy intelligence can locate concentrations of active cellphones to send in artillery strikes. US forces are constantly reminded about cellphone use in combat but privates never listen. It’s like keeping cellphones out of prison.
From the Hamas perspective, both of these results would constitute a “win”. Hamas leadership does not give a rat’s ass for the Palestinian civilians - their deaths are just grist for the propaganda mill.
Yes, there are large propaganda mills on both sides of the conflict.
Or… bear with me here… It’s possible that initially, we (and the press) were relying on poor information, first hand reports given by people who were traumatized by what happened and were not giving completely accurate information. As more data comes in, more analysis, we get a clearer picture of what actually happened.
As we now see, the hospital was not “blown up” - the explosion seemed to happen in an adjacent courtyard/parking lot where a bunch of people were sheltering.
But hey - if you prefer to believe initial breathless reports from folks on the ground who had no idea what actually happened and just reported their feelings… that’s fine, you do you.