On 26 October 2023, the BBC noted that the analyses since the explosion have focused on three main areas: the absence of any fragments from the munition, the crater and damage caused by the explosion, and images showing "a projectile rising over Gaza". To conduct a full investigation would require independent access to the site, inspection of any physical evidence, and the ability to interview witnesses–none of which has been possible because of the state of the ongoing war. On 20 October, Channel 4 News in collaboration with research group earshot also used
doppler effect sound analysis of the strike and visual analysis of the crater created by the strike. Both analyses indicated that the object that caused the blast would have come from points "east of the hospital not west as the IDF claimed". Channel 4 also reported that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had not backed their claims of Israeli origin with evidence and that "Islamic Jihad claimed to have a missile fragment but have not produced it". the
Associated Press (AP) concluded—from analyzing "more than a dozen videos from the moments before, during and after the hospital explosion, as well as satellite imagery and photos"—that a rocket was "fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground", while noting the unavailability of definitive proof. AP reported that its preliminary conclusion was supported by experts in open-source intelligence, geolocation, and rocketry: "who all agreed the most likely scenario was a rocket from within Gaza that veered off and came apart seconds before the explosion". The Associated Press (AP) article reads:"The camera pans to zoom in on a volley of rockets being fired from the ground nearby. One of the rockets appears to veer from the others, away from the distant lights of Israel and back toward a darkened
Gaza City, where electricity has largely been cut. The camera follows the light from the rocket's tail as it arches in the sky upwards and toward the left. Suddenly, the rocket seems to fragment, and a piece appears to break off and fall."The Al Jazeera video, contrary to the way it was initially described by the AP, does not depict any of the rockets in a volley "veering" from the others and then breaking up. Instead, it shows a lone rocket, not part of any volley fired earlier rising and then exploding. On 21 October,
CNN had an anonymous American acoustic expert analyze the sound waveform from the incident, and concluded that although the changes in frequency indicated the projectile was in motion, no information could be gleaned regarding the direction of the motion. CNN also reported that the dark scorch marks on the "dark patches on the ground fanning out in a southwesterly direction from the crater", and burnt trees and a knocked-over lamppost behind the crater, were consistent with a rocket approaching from the southwest. CNN noted that, if the projectile were an artillery munition, this could indicate a trajectory from the northeast, but the direction on impact would be inconclusive if the projectile malfunctioned and broke apart in the air. Markus Schiller, a missile expert who has provided analyses for
NATO and the
European Union (EU), told CNN that he believed a malfunctioning rocket "fell apart mid-air" and crashed into the car park. He also said it was not possible for him to confirm it with the "usual analysis drawing on altitude, flight path and the burn time" because it is not possible to predict the flight path and behavior of a malfunctioning rocket.
The Washington Post (
WP) published a similar analysis on 26 October 2023, which also concluded that the projectile shown in the videos is not the same projectile that caused the explosion at the hospital. Instead,
The Washington Post concluded that the projectile seen in the videos appeared to be an Israeli missile intercepting a rocket over Israeli territory about three miles from the hospital. Justin Bronk at
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said that, while not conclusive: "a rocket failure causing an explosion and fuel fire" was a more likely explanation than an Israeli airstrike.
The Wall Street Journal reported that analysts who examined publicly available images said the explosion site did not: "bear the hallmarks of a strike with a bomb or missile of the types used by Israel" and that the: "damage appeared more consistent with a fireball from a rocket".
Bellingcat noted that one of the images the IDF spokesman used to demonstrate there was no crater did in fact show what appeared to be a crater, and also quoted Garlasco's analysis. Bellingcat requested comment, The
Associated Press (AP) noted the absence of any large crater of the sort that would be expected if the explosion were caused by an Israeli airstrike. Although Israel does have smaller munitions in its arsenal, the AP noted that: "there has been no public evidence of such missile strikes in the area around the al-Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday night". AP reported that David Shank, a retired
U.S. Army colonel with expertise in military rockets and missiles, explained that the large explosion and subsequent fire was likely caused by the fact that the rocket was still full of propellant. The analysts interviewed by AFP stated that they could not completely rule out the scenario of a micro munition fired from an Israeli drone, at the same time observing that they were not aware of any evidence to support it.
The Wall Street Journal published a report on 21 October 2023, claiming to contain an analysis of four geolocated and verified videos of the incident, which concluded that the explosion was caused by a misfired rocket. According to
Le Monde, one of these videos depicted a completely different explosion, and its synchronization with the other videos was deemed incorrect.
Le Mondes analysis on 3 November 2023 showed that several rockets were launched from at least two sites within Gaza toward
Sderot before the explosion, with the
New York Times placing the firing of the last rocket about 25 seconds before the al-Ahli explosion, According to
NPR, as of 19 October 2023, the majority of independent researchers conclude that the damage is not consistent with a standard Israeli air strike.
Human Rights Watch found that "the sound preceding the explosion, the fireball that accompanied it, the size of the resulting crater, the type of splatter adjoining it, and the type and pattern of fragmentation visible around the crater are all consistent with the impact of a rocket" and that this was consistent with the type of rockets that Palestinian armed groups use.
Wounds suggesting a fragmentation or DIME bomb In October 2024, Forensic Architecture published another report that employed methods such as situated testimony, photogrammetry, and 3D reconstruction. The report utilized geolocated video evidence from survivors, including Dr.
Ghassan Abu-Sittah and journalists, to create a digital model of the hospital and conduct a spatial analysis of the explosion's impact. Abu-Sittah, who was present in the hospital during the impact, provided firsthand accounts of the scene and the nature of the injuries he treated. He recalled that the wounds were clean, characterized by sharp cuts and amputations, suggesting the use of a fragmentation bomb. "You can tell the difference between an IED and a missile by looking at the wound," he noted. "You can also distinguish between a fragmentation bomb and a regular bomb." Abu-Sittah further stated that most of the injuries he observed after the explosion were caused by munition fragments rather than burns, challenging the assertion made by Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket that failed to ignite its propellant in the air but instead ignited on impact. On November 17, 2024, Dr.
Ang Swee Chai said that the wounds were consistent with
dense inert metal explosives (DIME), a type of explosive known for causing high casualties within a small blast radius while doing minimal damage to surroundings.
Iron Dome After the explosion, there was speculation on social media that Israel's
Iron Dome air defense system could have played a role in causing the event. Al Jazeera said they had constructed a second-by-second timeline by analyzing video footage of the event. According to Al Jazeera, a rocket launched from Gaza was intercepted by an Iron Dome interceptor and "completely destroyed" in mid-air five seconds before the hospital explosion. As no more rocket launches could be seen in video footage from Gaza from this time until the hospital explosion, Al Jazeera said that they found "no grounds" for the IDF assertion that the hospital explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch from Gaza. The investigation also identified "four Israeli air strikes on Gaza, targeting the area near the hospital" in the minutes before the explosion.
Uzi Rubin, the founder and first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, told the BBC that the video footage is not consistent with an Iron Dome interception, which causes "an almost immediate sympathetic explosion of the hostile rocket warhead" as opposed to the "elongated glowing debris cloud that fades out after a couple of seconds" seen in the video. By contrast, Marc Garlasco said he did believe the video was consistent with an Iron Dome interception. A video geolocated by
Bellingcat showed "[a]t least two dozen bodies" in a grassy area near the explosion. The general director of Gaza's
al-Shifa Hospital, which took in victims of the blast, estimated the death toll at 250. Journalist David Zweig reported that widely reported claims in Western media that a GHM spokesperson claimed 500 had been killed appear to have originated from a mistranslation of an
Al Jazeera Arabic tweet, which correctly translated claimed over 500 total victims or casualties, not 500 or anywhere near 500 killed. Channel 4 News reported on a forensic analysis of the alleged Hamas operative audio released by the IDF, concluding that it was digitally manipulated. Two
Arabic language journalists said that the recording did not appear authentic, because the "language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone" were not credible.
Voice of America (VOA) and
NBC News quote a U.S. intelligence official who said that their conclusions regarding the cause of the explosion were based in part on another audio recording, different from the publicly available one and assessed as authentic by language experts. According to Muhammad Shehada, communications chief of
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor: "the dialect sounds dead foreign to Gaza itself". A Palestinian activist told
+972 Magazine that he was "stunned to hear his own voice" in the recordings released by the IDF and that he had never been a Hamas member.
Governments and other entities Israel The
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said 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. BBC journalists noted a discrepancy in the IDF statements, because while there is a cemetery behind al-Ahli, the Israeli military presented a map with a different location of the supposed launch site; it was a place located a few kilometers away from the hospital, and no cemetery is located there. On 18 October, the IDF released drone footage, which it said showed 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 said these attributes were inconsistent with the aftermath of Israeli munition strikes. Following the explosion, the official Israel
Twitter account published a statement saying that the attack was the result of an enemy rocket. Attached to the tweet was footage, purported to be proof of the rocket coming from Gaza. The IDF said it was not involved with the video, and attributed it to the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. • First, Palestinians have noted that the al-Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by rocket fire three days earlier, although according to
The New York Times, the source of the rocket fire remains unclear, and staff had received text messages and phone calls demanding that the hospital be evacuated.
PolitiFact found no evidence of Naftali being "an official spokesperson for Israel or its military". PolitiFact also noted, "He said in an Oct. 14 Facebook video that Netanyahu assigned him to a task force to defend Israel in the media". Hamas failed to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the explosion. Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesperson, told the Associated Press (AP) that Hamas would welcome a
United Nations (UN) investigation of the cause of the explosion. Marc Garlasco echoed this sentiment, indicating that in his 20 years of investigating war crimes, including during three wars in Gaza, this is the first time there were no remnants to be seen. During an Israeli interrogation, a PIJ spokesman said that the group was responsible for the explosion and that it had attempted to blame Israel in an attempt to "erase this story".
United States U.S. president Joe Biden supported the Israeli account of events, and referred to
Pentagon intelligence sources that indicate the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket misfire. Blake Spendley of
CNA said on 18 October that: "At the moment, the preponderance of evidence does point to it being a Hamas or PIJ rocket hitting the area". The
New York Times reported that Palestinian communications intercepted by Israel and publicly available video gave the intelligence community high confidence that a rocket launched from Gaza experienced a "catastrophic motor failure", causing the warhead to fall near the hospital. The officials said their analysis focused primarily on the Al Jazeera video that captured the moment of the explosion during a live broadcast, though they also considered signals intelligence and images of the aftermath of the explosion. They further said that their assessment was also based on the absence of any Israeli weapon presented by Palestinians at the site of the explosion. According to the U.S. officials, the videos showing the fireball and fire-damaged vehicles in the hospital parking lot are consistent with a malfunctioning missile. The officials also told
The Times that they had authenticated communications intercepts provided by Israeli intelligence, all of which consisted of Hamas members: "discussing their belief that the explosion was caused by an errant or malfunctioning rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad". The officials also told
The Times that they had low confidence in their assessment of a death toll between 100 and 300, noting that an accurate figure was impossible to confirm because of the absence of independent sources.
The Washington Post reported that the U.S. intelligence community had determined with "high confidence" that the cause of the explosion was not an Israeli airstrike and, "absent other points of information and supporting material", with "low confidence" that Palestinian fighters were responsible for the rocket that struck the parking lot. NBC News quoted an intelligence official who said that the intelligence community: "assessed with high confidence that Israel was not responsible for the explosion at the hospital and that Palestinian militants were responsible" and that they assessed with low confidence that Palestine Islamic Jihad had launched the rocket. A French military official who spoke with Associated Press (AP) on condition of anonymity stated that French intelligence drew this conclusion from classified information, satellite imagery, intelligence shared by other countries, and open-source information. The official stated that the blast crater was indicative of an explosive charge of approximately 5 kilograms, which is consistent with several types of rockets used by Palestinian militant groups. With regard to the origin of the rocket, the French official said that the impact hole suggested the projectile was on a south-to-north trajectory. In addition, the French military intelligence official indicated that, while he could not say for certain, the reported death toll of 471 did not seem possible based on the apparent size of the rocket.
Canada , Canada had refrained from taking a position regarding the cause of the explosion.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canadian officials "saw some preliminary evidence", but would continue to work with allies "before reaching any firm and final conclusion". On 21 October, Canada's
Department of National Defence (DND) announced that an independent analysis conducted by
Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) had determined: "with a high degree of confidence that Israel did not strike the hospital on October 17, 2023", and that the more likely cause was an errant rocket fired from inside Gaza. The assessment was based on open source intelligence and classified reporting.
United Kingdom Rishi Sunak, the
British Prime Minister, told the
House of Commons that, relying on
British intelligence agencies, the government had concluded that the blast was likely the result of a Palestinian rocket fired towards Israel. He also criticized the initial reporting, saying it had a negative impact on the region.
Italy Antonio Tajani, Italy's
Foreign Minister, said on 24 October 2023 that the cause of the explosion was not an Israeli missile and that the death toll was around 50. He did not indicate what evidence formed the basis of his comments. ==Reactions==