US intelligence believes the explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip was the result of a Palestinian rocket that missed Israel, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
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“We are still gathering information, but our initial assessment, and this is the assessment of US government intelligence agencies, is that the hospital explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militants in Gaza,” he told a briefing.
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Al-Ahly Hospital in the Gaza Strip was attacked on October 17. Gaza’s health ministry said 471 people were killed and more than 300 were injured, most of them women and children. Palestinians and Israelis blamed each other for the attack: the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said that the attack was carried out by Israeli planes, and the Israeli army said that the hospital was hit by a rocket that was unsuccessfully launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev called the incident a war crime. He placed the final responsibility for it on the United States, which “cynically makes money from wars in different countries and on different continents” and “thoughtlessly distributes colossal money for weapons, loading up its military-industrial complex.”
