al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion

On 17 October 2023, amid the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, an explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, where thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought shelter from airstrikes, caused an unprecedented number of deaths–more than any other single event in Gaza since the conflict between Gaza and Israel began in 2008. The number of fatalities is still uncertain, but is reported to be more than 500. The explosion was one of the deadliest attacks on a hospital in decades.

The cause of the explosion is disputed. The Gaza Health Ministry said the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli Defense Forces denied this, saying that the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad targeting the Israeli city of Haifa. An Islamic Jihad spokesman denied responsibility.

Background

The hospital has been in operation since 1882. It was founded by the Church of England's Church Mission Society and was later run as a medical mission by the Southern Baptist Conference between 1954 and 1982. It returned to the Anglican Church in the 1980s. It was funded mostly by the Episcopal Church and the European Union and operated as a nonsectarian hospital managed by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which reported that it had about 80 beds, and was the only Christian hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Thousands of people displaced by the evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip had sought shelter at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital to avoid Israeli airstrikes. The hospital was damaged by Israeli rocket fire late on 14 October, leaving four staff members injured, according to a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Before the rocket fire on 14 October, the hospital sheltered around 6,000 displaced persons; subsequently many of them fled, with around 1,000 remaining in the courtyard.

On 16 October, Israel ordered at least 20 hospitals in Gaza, including the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, to evacuate. Because of insufficient beds at hospitals already over capacity in the southern Gaza Strip and no means of transporting certain patients, such as newborns in incubators or patients on ventilators, the evacuation orders were widely regarded as impossible to comply with.

Explosion and responsibility

The number of persons killed in the explosion, as well as the cause of the explosion, has not been independently verified. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry stated that at least 500 people were killed in the blast, and blamed an Israeli airstrike. The director of the Al-Shifa Hospital reported that around 350 injured people were brought to his hospital by both ambulances and personal cars.

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Yousef Abu al-Rish, stated that Israel fired two artillery shells at Al-Ahli Hospital as a prelude to bombing it. The initial shelling took place on the evening of 14 October, followed by a call from the Israeli army requesting the hospital's evacuation. The army clarified that the initial shells were a warning. Abu al-Rish presented this information at a news conference, showing photographs of the munitions and damage, and commented that such warnings via artillery are unique to the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Defense Forces stated that the cause of the blast was a misfired rocket targeting the Israeli city of Haifa and launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that intelligence indicated that PIJ had launched a barrage of rockets near the hospital, and shared drone-collected aerial photography that he said was inconsistent with Israeli munitions. The IDF also claim that Israel intercepted discussions among militants saying that their misfired rocket caused the explosion. An Islamic Jihad spokesman denied responsibility. On October 18, the IDF released drone footage purporting to show the hospital before and after the explosion. The annotated video showed burned vehicles in the hospital parking lot, and noted the apparent lack of a crater or significant structural damage to surrounding buildings. The IDF claimed that these attributes were inconsistent with the aftermath of Israeli munition strikes.

The official Twitter account for the Israeli government initially posted a video that allegedly showed a rocket from Gaza causing the explosion. However, Aric Toler, an investigative journalist from The New York Times, pointed out that the video was recorded at least 40 minutes after the explosion at the hospital. Later, the Israeli government Twitter account removed the video.

The Guardian reported that "the scale of the blast appeared to be outside the militant groups’ capabilities." Al Jazeera wrote that it was unable to verify either of the alleged accounts. A video verified by The Washington Post was described as "captur[ing] the first sounds of an explosion — a whirring noise in the air and then a loud blast — as the camera pans to show plumes of smoke, tinged orange from the flames, across a nighttime sky." According to The Economist, "Some open-intelligence analysts posited that it happened when a Palestinian rocket exploded mid-air—perhaps intercepted by Israeli air-defence systems—and the warhead fell onto the hospital."

Reactions

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning following the deadly event and canceled a planned meeting with US President Joe Biden. Biden stated that he was "outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion", but did not immediately attribute blame for the incident, stating instead that the US would investigate the event. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the explosion as "horrible" and "unacceptable", but did not assign blame. The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, condemned the alleged attack. The secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that he was "horrified by the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in a strike on a hospital". UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, condemned the "totally unacceptable" and "horrific" strike and demanded accountability. Médecins Sans Frontières said it was "horrified" by the "Israeli bombing", and called it a massacre. The Red Cross was "shocked and horrified" by the reports.

Hezbollah said the blast was an Israeli "massacre" and called for a "day of rage" on 18 October against Israel and Biden's pending visit to the Middle East. Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey also condemned the alleged attack, while Qatar condemned what they described as "a dangerous escalation". Saudi Arabia condemned "the forces of the occupation" for the alleged attack, which it described as a "heinous crime". Russia and the UAE called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, said that the Middle East was "on the brink of falling into the abyss" amid fears that the conflict could escalate into a wider war involving other armed groups. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi vowed a "harsh response" to what happened.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog condemned Palestinian Islamic Jihad, writing, "Shame on the vile terrorists in Gaza who wilfully spill the blood of the innocent." Herzog said that accusations that Israel caused the blast were "a 21st-century blood libel." On 16 October 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office published a post on X quoting Netanyahu's speech in the Knesset and saying, "This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle." The post was deleted after the massacre at the Gaza hospital in the face of criticism for its language, which some called "genocidal".

The explosion sparked protests in a number of countries, including Canada, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Yemen. In Ramallah and other cities in the West Bank, protestors chanted against Mahmoud Abbas and threw stones, leading to police using tear gas and stun grenades in an attempt to disperse protestors. Thousands of protestors marched outside the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul to protest against the war, and in Jordan, protestors attempted to storm the Israeli embassy. The US and French embassies in Beirut also faced protests aimed at their support for Israel.

A quadrilateral summit between King Abdullah II, Mahmoud Abbas, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Joe Biden was canceled after Jordan annulled it and Abbas withdrew from it.