ISRAEL MILITARY DENIES RESPONSIBILITY FOR GAZA HOSPITAL BLAST, – Spokesman understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that has misfired
Israel’s military said it had seen no evidence of a direct hit on a hospital in the Gaza Strip the day before, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in an explosion.
In an English-language briefing televised shortly before U.S. President Joe Biden landed in Israel for a solidarity visit, chief military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari accused Hamas of inflating the number of casualties from the explosion.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, blamed the deadly blast on Israel. Israel says it was a result of a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in the enclave.
The death toll from the hospital explosion was by far the highest of any single incident in Gaza during the current violence, triggering protests in the occupied West Bank and in the wider region, including in Jordan and Turkey.
