Gaza hospital blast: Everything we know about the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital attack

A strike on a hospital in Gaza has killed hundreds of people, it emerged on Tuesday night (October 17).

The bombing killed 500 people at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, according to the enclave's health ministry, including women and children.

Both Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for the attack on the hospital, which is fully funded by the Anglican Church, which says the facility is independent of any political factions in Gaza.

If the death toll is confirmed, the attack would be by far the deadliest airstrike in five wars fought over Gaza since 2008.

Here's everything we know about the attack thus far.

What has Israel said?

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has denied responsibility for the strike and has said it would produce evidence that it was caused by Palestinian, not Israeli fire.

The Israeli military blamed Islamic Jihad, a smaller, more radical Palestinian militant group that often works with Hamas. The military said Islamic Jihad militants had fired a barrage of rockets near the hospital and that “intelligence from multiple sources” indicated the group was responsible.

The chief army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the army determined there were no air force, ground or naval attacks in the area at the time of the blast. He said radar detected outgoing rocket fire at the same moment, and intercepted communications between militant groups indicated that Islamic Jihad fired the rockets.

Hagari also shared aerial footage collected by a military drone that showed a blast that he said was inconsistent with Israeli weaponry.

“A barrage of rockets was fired by terrorists in Gaza, passing in close proximity to the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, at the time it was hit,” a spokesperson for the IDF said.

“Intelligence from a few sources that we have in our hands indicates that the Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that “it was barbaric terrorists in Gaza that attacked the hospital in Gaza, and not the IDF”.

What has Hamas said?

Hamas has blamed Israel for the attack and called Tuesday’s hospital blast “a horrific massacre".

Islamic Jihad dismissed counter claims from Israel placing the blame at their door and accused Israel of “trying hard to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed”.

The group pointed to Israel’s order that Al-Ahli be evacuated and its previous bombing of the hospital complex as proof that the hospital was an Israeli target. It also said the scale of the explosion, the angle of the bomb’s fall and the extent of the destruction all signal Israel was to blame.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called it “genocide" and a “humanitarian catastrophe” while there were protests in the occupied West Bank.

How have others reacted?

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah called for a “day of rage” to coincide with US president Joe Biden’s arrival to the region.

Jordan’s King Abdullah said the bombing of a Gaza hospital was a “war crime” that one cannot be silent about. In a royal court statement the monarch, who blamed the bombing on Israel, said Israel should immediately end its war against the enclave and that its actions against innocent Palestinians were a “shame on humanity”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was shocked and horrified by the reports.

"Hospitals should be sanctuaries to preserve human life, not scenes of death and destruction. No patient should be killed in a hospital bed. No doctors should lose their lives while trying to save others," a statement said.

"Hospitals must be protected under international humanitarian law."

The World Health Organization also called for the immediate protection of civilians and healthcare and urged the Israeli military to reverse the evacuation orders it has issued to 20 hospitals in northern of Gaza ahead of what is expected to be a major ground offensive.

"The order for evacuation has been impossible to carry out given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, and lack of ambulances, staff, health system bed capacity, and alternative shelter for those displaced."

Joe Biden said that the hospital explosion in Gaza appears to have been caused “by the other team” as he spoke alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu today.

Biden said he was “deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion”.

“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” he told Netanyahu.

“But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure, so we have got to overcome a lot of things.”

It remains unclear who was behind the “devastating” attack on a hospital in Gaza, Tory minister Andrew Griffith said.

The Treasury minister told Times Radio: “I’m not going to speculate or try and attribute. I don’t think any of us know at this particular point in time. We’ll work with allies to try and work out what happened.”

UK foreign secretary James Cleverly said:

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