Finance
Washington:On Wednesday, the White House stated that US intelligence shows Israel was not responsible for a strike on a Gaza hospital.
President Joe Biden stated that a “terrorist group” appeared to be responsible for firing a misfired rocket, resulting in the incident.
Biden has backed Israel’s insistence that it did not carry out Tuesday’s hospital strike that killed several hundred people. The Palestinian group Hamas says Israel was responsible.
“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said on social media.
The US intelligence included satellite and infrared data showing the launch of a projectile from the positions inside Gaza, the New York Times reported, citing US officials.
Israeli officials had supplied Washington with intercepted communications between Hamas officials, while US intelligence had also looked at open source video of the launch, it said.
During a brief visit to express solidarity with Israel after the October 7 Hamas attacks, Biden, in Tel Aviv, informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it seemed the opposing group carried out the strike.
The US president later gave a firmer attribution of blame, saying that “based on the information we’ve seen to date, it appears as a result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”
He said the assessment relied on “data I was shown by my defense department.”
There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon.
The hospital strike killed 471 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, and has sparked anger across the Arab and Muslim world.
Hamas said after the explosion on Tuesday that the cause was an Israeli air strike.
Israel has said the Islamic Jihad group had caused the explosion with a misfired rocket.
Since the Hamas attack, Israel has caused approximately 1,400 casualties in Gaza through air and artillery strikes, including shootings, stabbings, and burnings, with 199 individuals taken hostage.
