by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Reuters
Numerous IDF officials had already slammed the decision to use tank fire on a hospital, as opposed to other precise targeting measures and operations.
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The IDF on Tuesday revealed that six of the around 20 Palestinians killed in the military’s tank shelling of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis on Monday morning were Hamas terrorists.
However, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir did not make this declaration to clear the military of mistakes in the operation.
Rather, this was only the second release of additional details, with more probing necessary into why tank shells were mistakenly approved for the operation and who gave the order.
Curiously, the IDF statement distinguished between potential errors made by commanders in the field as well as commanders back at IDF Southern Command Headquarters in Beersheba.
Numerous IDF officials had already slammed the decision to use tank fire on a hospital, as opposed to other precise targeting measures and operations, which have been used more often in the last two years.
In other words, while there have been reports that the IDF Golani soldiers in the field had seen suspicious movements, the order to fire was given without knowing for sure that there were Hamas forces there, how many there were, or who they were.
So far, the IDF has also not presented all of its information regarding which of the six were terrorists, though information about some of those killed has already leaked unofficially.
According to the IDF, one of the six terrorists was also involved in aspects of the October 7 invasion, although videos have shown the individual carrying a flag into Israel, not specifically carrying out any of the around 1,200 murders.
The IDF already admitted that the attack, or how it was carried out and its results, was a mistake early Monday afternoon. The issue immediately swelled to major global media coverage, partially because well-known journalists, including from Reuters, were killed in the attack.
According to the IDF message on Tuesday, clearly some, and likely the majority, of these journalists were not Hamas. The military said it did not intend to harm journalists or innocent Palestinian civilians.
Earlier on Monday, IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the Israel Air Force was not in charge of any operation in that area.
They said the “address” for managing any such attack would have been IDF Southern Command, which is headed by Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asor, although different levels of officials approve targets of varying levels of sensitivity.
In addition, the IDF did not deny that there were two separate rounds of fire on the hospital. The second round caused additional deadly harm to medical and media officials who came to the scene to assist after the first strike.The military’s message on Tuesday did not address the justification for the second round of shelling.
The likelihood that there were two rounds of shell firing was condemned even more strongly in global media coverage and appeared to be an issue that would be even harder to explain.
Reuters, AP journalists killed in Gaza strike were not 'a target,' IDF Intl. spox. says
Two journalists for Reuters and the Associated Press who were killed in an Israeli attack on a Gaza hospital were not "a target of the strike," a military spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday, adding the army chief had ordered a further inquiry into how the decision to strike the hospital was made."We can confirm that the Reuters and AP journalists were not a target of the strike," the IDF's international spokesperson Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani told Reuters on Tuesday. Three other journalists were also killed in the strike.
Using its own camera equipment, Reuters has frequently broadcast a feed from Nasser hospital during the Gaza war. For the past several weeks the news agency had been delivering daily feeds from the hospital position that was hit.
"At the same time, the Chief of the General Staff regrets any harm caused to civilians," the statement said, adding that the Israeli military directs its activities solely toward military targets.
Hamas claimed in a statement that one of the six Palestinians whom Israel alleged were terrorists was killed in al-Mawasi, some distance from the hospital, and another was killed elsewhere at a different time.
The Hamas statement did not clarify whether the two who were killed elsewhere were also civilians.
The written Israeli military statement identified what it called "several gaps" that Israel's Chief of the General Staff had instructed be further examined:
"Firstly, a further examination of the authorization process prior to the strike, including the ammunition approved for the strike and the timing of the authorization.
"Secondly, an examination of the decision-making process in the field."
Strikes on hospitals require senior authorization
Generally, higher-level officials must approve an attack on a hospital, even if there is a terrorist in the vicinity.The IDF tries to avoid striking civilians, IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin said on Monday night, adding that it must sometimes pursue Hamas terrorists even when they hide in hospitals.Oddly enough, Defrin gave no specific information about the Hamas assets that were struck during the incident. That led to speculation that there were disagreements within the IDF about what the target was and whether it was negligent to fire using shells as opposed to a more surgical and precise strike.
Since Asor took command of IDF operations in Gaza in March, sources in the IAF have periodically slammed him for being less thorough in avoiding civilian casualties than his predecessor, Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman.
IDF's civilian-to-terrorist ratio likely the worst since October 7
The IDF’s recent ratios of civilians harmed compared with terrorists have likely been the worst since the start of the war. For much of the war, a ratio of 60% civilians to 40% terrorists harmed seemed broadly accurate, various IDF officers said off the record.That would have put Israel in good standing compared with other countries that had to fight terrorists in urban areas with the systematic use of human shields. But this was at the stage when the IDF was sometimes killing thousands of Hamas terrorists per week or month.
In contrast, over the past half year, the IDF has said it had killed more than 2,000 Hamas terrorists. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, about 11,000 Gazans have been killed during that same period.
The IDF has cited numerous examples of Hamas exaggerating or downright inventing nonexistent mass civilian casualty incidents.
But the IDF has not tossed Hamas’s estimates completely out the window, and it has declined to provide its own estimated civilian casualty tally, something that it always did in prior conflicts in Gaza.
Cameraman Hussam al-Masri, one of the journalists killed in the strikes, was a contractor for Reuters. Photographer Hatem Khaled, also a Reuters contractor, was wounded.
The officials in Gaza named the three other journalists as Mariam Abu Dagga, who the Associated Press said freelanced for the AP and other outlets since the start of the Gaza conflict; Mohammed Salama, who Qatar-based Al Jazeera said worked for the broadcaster; and Moaz Abu Taha.
A rescue worker was also among those killed, the Gaza health officials said.
The hospital was reportedly operating at full capacity, treating more than 1,000 patients at the time of the strikes, Nasser Hospital Director Atef al-Hout told Al-Arabiya TV. More than 50 people were wounded, he said.
Yonah Jeremy Bob, Reuters
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-865388
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