US spy businesses consider the blast at a Gaza hospital every week in the past was brought on by a Palestinian rocket that suffered engine failure and broke aside into two items, with the warhead hanging the hospital’s car parking zone, intelligence officers mentioned on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters by cellphone, the intelligence officers mentioned they’d “high confidence” of their evaluation that it was not Israel that fired the rocket, however have been much less sure which Palestinian militants fired the projectile on the night of 17 October.
“We assess with high confidence that Israel was not responsible for the explosion at the hospital and that Palestinian militants were responsible,” one intelligence official mentioned.
“We assess with low confidence that Palestine Islamic Jihad was responsible for launching the rocket that landed on the hospital.”
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US officers had indicated beforehand that Palestine Islamic Jihad, or PIJ, was seemingly accountable and Israel blamed the group for the blast. The militant group shares Hamas’s purpose of destroying Israel however is smaller than Hamas, which guidelines the Gaza Strip.
The proof pointing to PIJ was based mostly on intercepted conversations between suspected “Hamas affiliated militants” who seemed to be speculating about who was behind the rocket launch, the officers mentioned.
“We can’t confirm who they are. We can’t confirm that what they are discussing in the intercept actually took place,” the official mentioned.
The audio was not the identical as that launched publicly by Israel’s army beforehand and was vetted and deemed genuine, the official mentioned.
The explosion at al Ahli Hospital has sparked anger throughout the Arab world, with protesters embracing the model of occasions put ahead by Palestinian officers and Hamas – that Israel was accountable.
The US evaluation on the rocket was based mostly on intelligence, “physical activity”, open supply video and pictures that each one pointed to a rocket blast and never a bomb dropped from an plane or artillery spherical utilized by Israeli forces, the officers mentioned.
“The damage at the hospital is consistent with what we would expect to see from a rocket and inconsistent with the larger craters and broader blast effects that we would expect to see… from an air dropped munition or an artillery round,” the official mentioned.
The explosion resulted in solely mild structural harm on the hospital and there was no observable harm to the primary hospital constructing, which was in step with a rocket armed with a smaller warhead, the official mentioned.
Open supply video that was geolocated and brought from 4 places confirmed a projectile launched inside Gaza touring northeast, and 10 seconds later, there seems to be engine hassle based mostly on the depth of the rocket’s plume, the official mentioned.
Seconds later, there’s a flash, with one object falling after which a second.
One of the movies analysed by the intelligence group was aired on Al-Jazeera tv, the official mentioned.
US intelligence assesses that the primary object falling was the rocket motor, and the second was the rocket’s warhead, which triggered a bigger explosion, the official mentioned.
“Based on those videos, our conclusion is that there was a catastrophic motor failure that likely occurred which separated the motor and the warhead,” the official mentioned.
“The warhead landed in the hospital compound and that was the second explosion and a much bigger one.”
The official added: “We can’t rule out that new information is going to come to light that would change our assessment on this. But that said, we do have high confidence in our conclusions.”
Palestinian rockets typically misfire and miss their meant targets, the intelligence official mentioned.
“The failure rate for these domestically produced rockets is pretty high,” they added. “There are a lot of incidents in which they don’t make it out of Gaza. They land in the sea, they fail to reach their targets.”
“So that does fit within a longstanding, years-long pattern in terms of rocket performance,” the official mentioned.
Intelligence officers mentioned they didn’t have an estimate on the casualties brought on by the blast.
“We don’t have any independent ability to verify the specific casualty count in Gaza,” the official mentioned.
There was no proof that the rocket was shot down by Israel’s air defence Iron Dome system, officers mentioned.
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Arab governments have been sceptical of the US and Israeli evaluation of the blast.
“Nobody is buying that narrative in this part of the world,” Jordan’s overseas minister, Ayman Safadi, instructed NBC News final week.
A senior intelligence official who took half within the briefing mentioned American diplomats had requested for extra info to share with governments within the area.
Although an preliminary evaluation was made the evening of the blast, US intelligence businesses compiled a extra thorough evaluation over a number of days making an allowance for related video and pictures, the senior intelligence official mentioned.
NBC News is Sky News’ US associate community
Source: information.sky.com”