Aftermath images from the Gaza hospital explosion are 'inconsistent' with an Israeli airstrike, former UN war-crimes investigator says

• Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike for the deadly explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday.
• Israel denied this, pinning blame — as the US has — on a Palestinian militant group's failed rocket.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Hamas — and many observers — were quick to blame Israel, which has been conducting nonstop bombing runs for days in response to the group's recent terrorist attacks.

As daylight broke Wednesday and a clearer picture of the site was revealed, US officials, experts, and analysts began to push back on the initial claims that blamed the Israel Defense Forces. A former United Nations war-crimes investigator said the visual evidence from the incident was "completely inconsistent" with what the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike would look like.

"We don't even have a crater," Marc Garlasco, who was the Pentagon's chief of high-value targeting during Operation Iraqi Freedom, told Insider. "I would call it a small hole or an impact site that was caused by the kinetic energy of whatever it was that came out of the sky."

Local authorities said the explosion at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City killed hundreds of people, and Hamas immediately accused Israel of conducting an airstrike on the facility. The IDF, however, said it investigated the situation and challenged the allegation, asserting that a "failed" rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group had caused the destruction at the hospital.

Israel has published what it has said is evidence to back up its defense, including satellite imagery, video footage, and a purported audio call. Insider was not able to independently verify either side's account, but videos captured Tuesday show a rocket barrage from Gaza coincided with the explosion at the hospital. The US has said its current assessment is in line with Israel's explanation of what happened.

During a daring visit to Israel on Wednesday, President Joe Biden said he was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the tragedy at the Gaza hospital. Then, speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that "based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not — not you," but that "there's a lot of people out there who are not sure."

Biden told reporters that data provided by the Pentagon had led him to believe Israel was not at fault. Several media networks — including NBC, CBS, and ABC — cited American officials saying that independent US intelligence pointed to a failed militant rocket rather than an Israeli strike. The White House then issued its own statement on the matter.

"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," the White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

As details of the incident, including videos of the munition flying past, began to surface Tuesday, some observers noted that the weapon appeared to be under power, which would be the case for rockets but not air-dropped bombs. In one video, the blast is preceded by a whizzing noise that would come from a rocket or missile.

Others noted that the fiery blast that charred vehicles in the hospital's parking lot could be the result of unspent fuel from a rocket, which could exacerbate the effects of a rocket carrying a payload of only a few hundred pounds. Still, much was unclear.

As daytime photographs and videos of the scene began circulating across social media on Wednesday, some independent analysts, experts, and open-source intelligence accounts pointed out the lack of a massive crater and little structural damage to cars in the vicinity as a telling sign that an airstrike was unlikely the cause.

Garlasco said that if Israel had struck the hospital with an air-dropped bomb, some of which are heavy 2,000-pound munitions, he would expect to see a larger crater somewhere between 3 and 10 meters wide, with significant blast and fragmentation damage.

"Instead, we're seeing a small hole and significant thermal damage," he said. Normally, a rocket launched by a Palestinian militant group would not cause such extreme thermal effects on impact because the weapon would already have expended all its fuel by the time it reached the target. But if the rocket failed shortly after launch, it still would have had a good amount of fuel left, which could trigger explosions and fires that might scar the area in a manner consistent with photos of the scene.

"I think that the Israeli version is at least plausible — I don't want to say I know what it was," he said. "I can definitely rule out an airstrike, but looking at the various possibilities I think that a failed rocket is the most likely."

Garlasco, who led UN war-crimes investigations in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, said that if he were investigating this situation, he would first move to get forensic evidence for the weapon — a rocket or missile leaves a huge amount of debris at the scene — to understand and identify what type of munition it was. The next step would be to conduct a crater analysis and to interview the victims, witnesses, IDF personnel, as well as Hamas and PIJ militants. Investigators would also want to review satellite imagery and video of the launch and strike.

"Basically, you want to do it as holistic and deep a dive as you possibly can, without relying on any single source too much," he said. "That said, I think that the forensic evidence of the weapon remnants is the one piece that is still standing out that needs to be collected."

Garlasco said without getting significant forensic evidence from the site, like a piece of the weapon that could identify conclusively who launched it, responsibility could at best be attributed to the "most likely" culprit. If the source of the weapon were to be discovered though, then this could lead to a war-crimes investigation.

A top UN official told CNN on Wednesday that the organization would conduct its own investigation into the blast. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry in Gaza said more than 470 people had been killed as a result of the hospital explosion — a staggering figure that comes amid a dire humanitarian crisis in the tiny coastal enclave.

"In 20 years of conducting war crimes investigations in a variety of conflicts, this would be one of the highest single counts of civilian deaths at a site that I've ever seen, and it really speaks to just the density of the Palestinians crowding into an area that they thought was safe to try to protect them from the air war," Garlasco said.

"It's just really a sad statement and an indictment of this conflict and shows the need for a cease-fire and immediate cessation — or at least soon as possible — the cessation of hostilities," he added.

The Israeli government declared war on Hamas after the militant group staged a series of brutal terrorist attacks across southern Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,300 people and injuring more than 4,000 others. The horrific attacks shocked the broader region and the world. The ensuing bombing campaign of Gaza, which the IDF says is a precursor to a ground offensive in the strip, has killed at least 3,000 Palestinians and injured more than 12,000, according to the latest UN figures.