The US government has collected signals intercepts and other forms of intelligence that preliminarily suggest Israel’s forces did not bomb the al-Ahli hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, three US officials told Al-Monitor.
As of Wednesday morning, Washington’s initial assessment of the intelligence led to “moderate confidence” that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were not behind the strike, casting doubt on initial allegations by Hamas that have touched off a firestorm of protests across the Middle East.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry initially blamed the Israeli military of bombing the hospital, killing 471 people. The IDF later said a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was behind the explosion, a charge that group denied.
The US officials, who spoke to Al-Monitor on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, were reticent to say what type of munition they believed had caused the blast or to specify which Palestinian faction was suspected to have launched it, cautioning that not all the intelligence streams had been synthesized.
