- cross-posted to:
- becomeme@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- becomeme@sh.itjust.works
You must log in or register to comment.
So… setting aside the source of this explosive for a moment (because there’s a lot of speculation and no firm answer yet), can we all agree that there’s no way this killed 500 people? The impact crater is about the size of a sewer manhole (there’s one near it in the panorama image in the article).
The initial reporting on this was sensationalized to generate outrage and sympathy.
This is the thing I’ve been thinking about a lot. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near that explosion, but aftermath sure doesn’t seem to line up with “500 people killed in hospital collapse caused by explosion”. I don’t even see a collapsed building in the panorama shot. Somebody’s lying their ass off, and I have no idea who it is.
Based on the pictures in the article, there was definitely some damage to nearby buildings, particularly the roofs of the two buildings to the south. But “collapsed” seems to be sensationalism/clickbait. For that I would blame the journalists doing the reporting.
Here’s a clue who’s lying. It’s the ones who claim that 500 peoole were killed, that’s a preposterous figure that Zionist haters lapped up.
The problem is that the Israeli state has done preposterously malicious things in the past. But in this case, Hamas was trying to pull a fast one, and they honestly played a blinder.
People will remember the outrage and disgust they felt, despite the later retraction.
I haven’t seen a reputable source yet claim that the deaths weren’t in the hundreds, and none lower than 300. That’s still an enormous loss of civilian life and not meaningfully distinct from 500, IMO. I do have to go outside sometimes, meaning that I’m not getting second by second updates, so if you have a reputable source to meaningfully dispute the death count, I’d be happy to consider it.
It’s known that their hospital system has servere levels of over crowding, and the article states both that:
The video shows cots, blankets, and other personal belongings on the grassy area. Taken together, these two videos indicate that it was likely occupied by people who were resting or sleeping there at the time of the explosion.
And that:
Other images from the parking lot of the hospital show widespread damage to vehicles in the parking lot, including one that was flipped over onto its roof. Another vehicle nearby shows signs of extensive damage, while others show evidence that they were engulfed in flames.
…an over crowded space, babies in cots, with an explosion large enough to flip a car, near one of the few areas with grass soft enough to sleep on.
Plus a fire.
Plus due a hospital low on supplies, low on water, in need of emergency power… Could probably kill hundreds, and cause the death of more.
If the hospital had some structural damage as well. Could probably do plenty of killing. The article doesn’t nominate a number, so I can’t speak to your source on that.
Estimation at best. They probably knew about 500 people were there, but had no idea of a body count.
That being said, a lot of people were sleeping in the grass next to the impact site, and some in the parking lot. They are estimating around 200-300 people. Some of the people in the grass were already dead.
But most were using it as temporary sleeping area due to the destruction of their home.
Last point I’ll talk about is that this crater was not caused by an airstrike like Hamas claimed. And the hospital is not destroyed which they also claimed. And the ballistics show that it would have come from not Hamas, but the other faction in the region, the Islamic Jihad group territory.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It shows a strong character, moral compass, openness and social skills to publicly change your opinion/stance.
You have my highest respect.
The other issue is that Hamas released that death count less than thirty minutes after the explosion. There’s no way to get an accurate number that quickly.
A pretty plausible scenario is that they realized the fuck up, which probably did cause an extensive number of casualties given that the courtyard was apparently full of civilians, and immediately pushed a story about Israel catastrophically bombing a hospital in order to deflect attention, in hopes that western media would repeat the story without question, which was of course a correct assumption.
Video of the aftermath. It’s horrific. ~500 is accurate. When half of them are children it doesn’t take up as much space as you think.
spoiler
Seriously, don’t click unless you’re ok seeing a lot of dead kids https://twitter.com/LocalFocus1/status/1714340397298733479
Right, so, this video is addressed in the article:
A video posted on Twitter on Tuesday night showed a grassy area adjacent to the hospital covered with dead bodies. At least two dozen bodies are visible in this video. Bellingcat is not linking to the video due to its graphic nature.
Did you read the article?
Not to quibble, but two dozen != 500. The difference is significant because of the effect it has had on reporting on the incident.
500 shows such bad faith, get real.
It’s one thing to argue who did it because none of us are sure and “evidence” points in both directions but y’all are fucking monsters if you’re going to try and downplay the scale of the violence with absolutely no evidence.
The video is horrific indeed - but fortunately (!) way less than than the first reported amount of people died. It is hard to really count but in the video itself it seem that less than 50 dead are shown. We don’t know if every casualty was filmed though.
The tweet itself still blames Israel for this, so the source doesn’t even pretend to be neutral/news.
They seem to be, rightfully, taking their time to piece together the details. A short update is up now in this article with the details that they HAVE confirmed. It confirms the direction/location but not the cause
Ignore the bot comment, it pulled the background context but not the important bits.
Damn that’s some good reporting
Bellingcat is usually pretty damn good reporting.
We definitely need some independent investigation, knowing the track record of both sides isn’t exactly pristine.
Bellingcat is on it.
Bellingcat is the only group anyone should trust with situations like this.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The ground surrounding one side of the crater shows a cone of scarring and pitting, consistent with the explosion of a munition at this site.
Objects within this cone appear to have suffered extensive damage, including a fence which was largely destroyed by the explosion.
As noted by Marc Garlasco, a Military Advisor at PAX for Peace’s Protection of Civilians team, the impact point does not appear to be consistent with the 500, 1000 or 2000-pound bombs used in Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).
A video posted on Twitter on Tuesday night showed a grassy area adjacent to the hospital covered with dead bodies.
In a press conference Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari outlined their analysis of the blast and why they believe it came from inside Gaza.
The World Health Organisation said the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital was operational and patients, health care workers and internally displaced people were sheltering there when the explosion occurred.Bellingcat will continue to monitor the latest war in Israel-Palestine, with the aim of documenting civilian harm.
The original article contains 524 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
https://twitter.com/GrantSmithEllis/status/1714399186295111815?t=wxkjKFCi8k2oZ0FTiwxV1g&s=19
10-minute video captured by AJArabic around the time the al-Ahli hospital was hit.
As per @Ted55643099:
Explosions on this video: (0:19) hospital. (0:16, 4:25, 4:49) behind and to the left of the hospital. (5:33, 5:56, 9:26, 10:46) behind hospital, most likely the same place. (9:38, 10:51) to the right of the hospital outside of the frame, likely the same place.
Not sure how reliable it is, but it seems like all these strikes are from the same munition class given the magnitude of the initial explosive flash.
So torn. If it was an Israeli bomb, the hospital wouldn’t exist anymore, but at the same time Israel lies about what happens so goddamn much I just assume it was them on principle. I guess we’ll find out soon.
Removed by mod
People keep saying this but it’s not true. Here’s a case from 2014 where the consensus is the munition was Israeli, with the eyewitness account of a NBC reporter. The impact was also indirect. The excuse is even the same, they blamed ‘Gaza terrorists’, not Hamas directly. That doesn’t mean its the same this time but it’s not a given that Israeli munitions would simply level the hospital.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/07/gaza-shifa-hospital-bombing
People seem to believe that every single bomb/missile that is being launched by the IDF into Gaza is going to be capable of or intended to level entire buildings for some reason…
This is such a weird assumption, but I guess a lot of people don’t understand that military forces use varied munitions depending on target hardness, density, etc.
There’s also a misconception about equating JDAMs with Israeli bombs in a strict sense, where people start to assume every Israeli bomb is a JDAM but thats not true either.
Yeah, good point because another crazy post I saw from someone today argued that it WAS a JDAM that hit near the hospital…
There’s a lot of people that seem to think they got their degree in military tactics and munitions from upstairs college this week.
This is a good way to analyze the situation: https://youtu.be/l29IRT16zq0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/l29IRT16zq0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
May have been a small diameter bomb.
Israel uses them in Gaza all the time.
May have been a janky rocket. They get fired from Gaza all the time.
Normally wouldn’t punch a hole like that.
The rockets Hamas builds are basically garbage. It would leave a round hole like that.
That’s not a 250 lb bomb hole
The video footage from Aljazeera shows a rocket, not a bomb
Got a source on that?
That Israel uses small diameter bombe in Gaza? Go to wiki. It’s referenced there. It was designed for that use case.
Hamas uses movie scenes, video games, and made up statistics. Why would you believe them over Israel?
tbf, Israel has blamed terrorism before and later it’s emerged that it wasn’t
I think we need to rely on evidence rather than either side’s propaganda
The question is: did Israel change their official stance or did they stay with the original message? If they changed the official stance, after learning new facts, I can see nothing wrong with that.
I have never heard of a Terrorist Organization on the other hand, to suddenly accept the blame for something that cannot get factually disputed anymore, where they put the blame on their enemy before.
I didn’t say I believe hamas, I said I don’t believe Israel.
Removed by mod
