JERUSALEM — Israel has confronted international condemnation for back-to-back strikes on the most important hospital in southern Gaza this week, which killed at the least 22 individuals, together with well being staff, emergency response crews and 5 journalists.
The assault on the hospital got here simply after 10 a.m. native time on Monday when a balcony on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was hit by what seems to be a tank shell, killing a Reuters cameraman and others. 9 minutes later, as a bunch of rescue staff and different journalists attended to the victims, they have been hit because the Israeli army fired once more on the hospital – a tactic generally known as a “double faucet.”
New video obtained by CNN reveals that this second “faucet” was actually two near-simultaneous strikes. These second and third strikes seem to have brought on many of the deaths.
Deliberately attacking rescue staff, journalists and different civilians is a violation of worldwide humanitarian legislation and a conflict crime.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conceded the incident was a “tragic mishap.”
However on Tuesday, the Israeli army defended the assault on the hospital, claiming that six “terrorists” had been killed within the assault, which it mentioned was directed at a “digital camera that was positioned by Hamas.” The Israel Protection Forces (IDF) mentioned it was persevering with to research “a number of gaps” in its understanding of what occurred. It insisted that the IDF “doesn’t deliberately goal civilians.”
Here’s what we find out about how the double-tap assault unfolded:
The primary strike hit the outside staircase of the Nasser Hospital, the place Reuters cameraman Hussam Al-Masri was filming, at about 10:08 a.m. native time in Gaza (3:08 a.m. ET). Al-Masri was killed and his digital camera feed went black.
Roughly 9 minutes elapsed between the primary strike and the later two, throughout which first responders, civil protection staff and journalists rushed as much as the fourth-floor website to take care of the preliminary victims and doc the assault.
In the meantime, from the bottom beneath the hospital, Al Ghad TV was broadcasting dwell video of the primary responders on the staircase.
Moments later, at 10:17 a.m. native time (3:17 a.m. ET), the second and third strikes hit.
Omar, who was wounded, informed CNN from his hospital gurney on Monday: “Journalists, sufferers, nurses, civil protection have been on the steps. We have been immediately focused.”
A frame-by-frame evaluation of one other video obtained by CNN of the identical second makes it clear that two extra munitions have been fired on the hospital. One shell hits the staircase the place first responders had gathered; a fraction of a second later, one other explodes at nearly the identical spot.
The 2 near-simultaneous shells seen within the new video are more likely to be from “multi-purpose” tank weapons, such because the Israeli M339 mannequin, based on an evaluation by weapons specialist N.R. Jenzen-Jones, who’s the director of Armament Analysis Companies. The harm seen following the strikes is per any such munition, he mentioned, “with clear proof of blast and fragmentation harm.”
“The affect of two projectiles at practically the very same second suggests two tanks might have fired on the goal concurrently,” Jenzen-Jones informed CNN. “It’s onerous to learn an excessive amount of into that, but it surely suggests a extra rigorously coordinated assault, quite than a single car firing at a ‘goal of alternative’. Trendy tank weapons, supported by the sensors and techniques of contemporary tanks, are very exact.”
When requested in regards to the third shell, the IDF mentioned it had no additional remark.
In grotesque video filmed after the second and third strikes, scores of our bodies might be seen on the staircase on each the highest ground and the ground beneath. After victims have been taken contained in the hospital, photographs taken by an worker of the Gaza Ministry of Well being present blood staining a number of flooring of the stairwell.
The 5 journalists killed have been Reuters contractor Al-Masri, freelance visible journalists Mariam Abu Dagga and Moath Abu Taha, who each labored with the Related Press (AP) and Reuters all through the conflict, freelance journalist Ahmed Abu Aziz, and Mohammad Salama, a cameraman for Al Jazeera in Gaza.
The fourth-floor balcony and staircase space of the Nasser Hospital was regularly used as a dwell digital camera place by Reuters, the Related Press and different international media shops. The situation was additionally identified for use by journalists looking for cell sign to add their materials.
Video reveals the projectiles that hit the hospital staircase have been coming from the northeast and have been per tank shells, based on an evaluation by Trevor Ball, a former US Military senior explosive ordnance disposal crew member. The aftermath of the strikes can be per fragmentation harm from tank shells such because the M339 mannequin, Ball informed CNN.
A satellite tv for pc picture taken by Planet Labs on August 22 reveals greater than a dozen fight autos, together with tanks, at an IDF base a mile-and-a-half northeast of Nasser Hospital. A number of different IDF bases are additional northeast, in addition to in different instructions. It isn’t clear whether or not the shells got here from these close by tanks or from one other IDF place.
The Committee to Defend Journalists (CPJ), Docs With out Borders (MSF), the UN Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres and lots of worldwide organizations have condemned the strikes. Nations together with Canada, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait additionally denounced the assault.
Nasser Hospital is the one hospital nonetheless working in southern Gaza, and healthcare staff have mentioned that stress on the medical middle is turning into insufferable as actions by the Israeli army have compelled the closure of different hospitals.
“For the previous two years, we’ve all been subjected to killing, destruction and hunger,” mentioned Salah Mansour, surgical division supervisor at Nasser Medical Advanced, in a sworn statement to the nonprofit group Medical Help for Palestinians. “Medical workers and hospitals are purported to be granted the very best degree of safety underneath worldwide legislation, but right here we’re, pleading for our security as healthcare staff.”
Because the strikes, Israel’s statements have developed. An preliminary IDF assertion didn’t acknowledge hitting the hospital immediately and didn’t point out killing anybody linked to Hamas.
Afterward Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned that Israel “deeply regrets” what he described as a “tragic mishap” at Nasser hospital. “Israel values the work of journalists, medical workers, and all civilians,” he added in a press release.
On Tuesday, the Israel Protection Forces launched an up to date account, saying it “seems” that an Israeli brigade “recognized a digital camera that was positioned by Hamas within the space of the Nasser Hospital that was getting used to look at the exercise of IDF troops, so as to direct terrorist actions in opposition to them.”
The IDF assertion didn’t handle the second strike and didn’t clarify why it believed the digital camera was positioned by Hamas. It additionally didn’t say how Israel distinguished the digital camera it claims was utilized by Hamas from press cameras identified to function from the balcony.
Whereas saying that troops “operated to take away the risk” of the digital camera, the IDF additionally claimed in its assertion that “six of the people killed” within the strikes on Nasser Hospital have been terrorists.
Individually, a safety supply informed CNN that not one of the journalists killed on Monday have been targets of the strike.
On Wednesday, Hamas and Gaza well being officers disputed the IDF account, saying that two of the people named by Israel have been killed at different places in Khan Younis. Dr. Yousef Abu Al Rish, deputy minister of well being in Gaza, informed CNN that Israel appeared to have taken information for the day from the native morgue and named a number of the useless as terrorists, even when they weren’t killed within the Nasser Hospital assault.
In its Tuesday assertion, the IDF mentioned it might “look at a number of gaps” in its understanding of the assault. This would come with analyzing the “authorization course of previous to the strike” and “the decision-making course of within the area.”
An Israeli safety official with data of the preliminary inquiry into the strikes informed CNN on Monday that IDF forces obtained authorization to strike the digital camera with a drone. However as a substitute, Israeli forces fired two tank shells, the supply mentioned – the primary on the digital camera and the second at rescue forces.
This remark by the safety supply is the one acknowledgment from an Israeli official that it deliberately focused the primary responders that arrived on the scene after the preliminary strike.
“(Humanitarian legislation) says which you can solely hurt civilians if it’s completely essential to reaching a reliable army objective and, subsequently, there’s a proportionality that’s at all times at play,” Hurst Hannum, professor emeritus of Worldwide Legislation at Tufts College, informed CNN relating to the strikes.
“It looks like, to me, an excessive use of power by merely shelling the hospital to get this digital camera – not solely as soon as however twice,” Hannum mentioned. “And I believe the burden of proving that this was proportional and the one means wherein Israel might cope with a risk to their IDF is far-fetched at finest.”
Reuters and the Related Press issued a joint letter to Israeli officers to demand a proof for the strikes that killed journalists, writing: “These journalists have been current of their skilled capability, doing vital work bearing witness. Their work is very important in mild of Israel’s practically two-year ban on international journalists coming into Gaza.”
In an obituary for Al-Masri, Reuters wrote that he was an skilled cameraman and father of 4 who was “liable for the feed Reuters broadcast day by day from Nasser Hospital, which offered a continuing real-time show of Gaza and was utilized by Reuters media purchasers around the globe.”
A Reuters spokesperson informed CNN that “Reuters didn’t inform the IDF of our cameraman’s particular location at Nasser hospital,” in contrast to earlier within the battle when the media group would share places of its groups “in an effort to make sure they’d not be focused by the IDF.”
“Reuters has regularly broadcast a feed from Nasser hospital through the conflict. For the previous a number of weeks, we had been delivering day by day feeds from the hospital place that was hit,” the Reuters spokesperson mentioned Wednesday. — CNN
