An Islamic Jihad failed rocket struck a hospital’s courtyard in Northern Gaza Tuesday night.
According to Baptist News, the airstrike is believed to have hit the courtyard of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The attack marks the second time the hospital has been hit in four days.
Following the airstrike, Palestinian officials blamed Israel for the attack, but the Israeli Defense Force denied any involvement and blamed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group for a “failed rocket launch.”
"The IDF has concluded an After Action Review and can confirm that the Islamic Jihad was responsible for the strike on the hospital in Gaza City," IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a press briefing. "We did an immediate review with all relevant branches of the IDF."
"This is what took place on Tuesday, October 17th: At 6:15 PM, a barrage of rockets was fired by Hamas at Israel,” he explained. “At 6:59 PM, a barrage of around ten rockets was fired by Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery. It was at 6:59 PM when there were reports of an explosion at the hospital in Gaza City."
"According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired — and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” Hagari noted. “They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.
President Joe Biden, who traveled to Israel on Wednesday, blamed the Palestinian terror group for the attack.
“I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Tel Aviv hotel. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears it was done by the other team and not you.”
“There’s a lot of people out there who are not sure. So we’ve gotta overcome a lot of things,” he added.
The IDF also released an intercepted phone call between two Hamas operatives discussing the failed rocket launch.
“They shot [the rocket] from the cemetery behind the hospital, and it misfired and fell on them,” one alleged Hamas member tells another in the call intercepted by the IDF.
The hospital has been in operation since 1882 and was originally founded by the Church Mission Society of the Church of England. At one point, missionaries were affiliated with the SBC Foreign Mission Board, now known as the International Mission Board, from 1954 to 1982. Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church has been running the hospital since 1980.
According to a Rasmussen Reports released last Friday, 53 percent of likely U.S. voters believe Palestine is mainly responsible for the conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, 10 percent say Israel is mostly to blame, while 24 percent say both sides are equally to blame, and another 13 are unsure.
The survey, which assessed 1,007 U.S. Likely Voters, was conducted on October 10-12, 2023.
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Ahmad Hasaballah / Stringer
Video Courtesy: AP via YouTube
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
