The Israeli military on Wednesday shared audio in which it claims Hamas terrorists admitted to bombing a Gaza hospital.
A massive blast rocked a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter Tuesday, killing hundreds of people, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
Although protesters blaming Israel took to the streets in Arab countries throughout the region, the Israelis said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.
"Islamic Jihad struck a Hospital in Gaza—the IDF did not. Listen to the terrorists as they realize this themselves," IDF posted Wednesday on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Israel said its radar and an independent video depicted a misfired rocket barrage that caused a large explosion as it hit the Al Ahli Arab Hospital.
In the recording, IDF translations says one person is heard asking, "Is it from us?"
"It looks like it," someone replies.
The purported members of Islamic Jihad then are heard acknowledging that the missile’s shrapnel "are local pieces, and not Israeli shrapnel," from rockets fired from the "cemetery behind the hospital."
"But God bless, it couldn’t have found another place to explode?" one of them asked.
A U.S. analysis of currently available data indicates that "Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday," a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council said Wednesday.
The assessment is based on the United States' analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a post on X, adding that the U.S. is continuing to collect information.
President Joe Biden, while visiting Israel on Wednesday, said the massive explosion at the hospital appeared to have been caused by Israel's foes.
Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: "I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
"But there's a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot, we’ve got to overcome a lot of things," the president added.
Biden later said his comment was based on information he had been shown by the U.S. Department of Defense, without elaborating further.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement whose fighters killed 1,400 Israelis in a rampage on Oct. 7.
Reuters contributed to this story.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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