The world owes explanations to its readers on how the deadly explosion that occurred on Tuesday, October 17, in a hospital in Gaza was handled.
That night, The world took up, at 7:18 p.m., an AFP dispatch reporting the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, blamed on the Israeli army, the initial toll of which stood at 200 dead. The text mentioned the fact that Israeli authorities were carrying out checks and doubted the veracity of this information. This publication was the subject of a headline on the front page of our site and an alert, like the main media on the planet.
At 9:57 p.m., we reported a formal denial from the Israeli army which attributed this explosion to the firing of a rocket carried out by Islamic Jihad, an organization allied with Hamas. As the evening progressed, doubts and contradictions accumulated about this explosion. We reported them both in our continuous coverage of the conflict on our site and on the front page of the next day’s daily (newspaper dated Thursday, October 19), which returned in headlines, more generally, on the “plight of the population” from Gaza and which mentioned “several hundred civilians dead” in the explosion at the hospital – the toll, unverifiable, is currently estimated between 100 and 300 victims by the American intelligence services. We also reported on Hamas’ accusations and the Israeli denial.
On Thursday, October 19, we published an investigation by our video service which, failing to provide formal proof, brings together images and chronological elements, none of which support the thesis of responsibility of the Israeli army. This work adds to that of other editorial staff and to multiple expert opinions which tend to show, failing to be able to formally demonstrate it, that the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital was caused by the fall of a rocket fired from Gaza by a Palestinian armed group.
Investigations into the origin of this tragedy continue, but these consistent elements lead us today to consider that we lacked caution on October 17 in reporting on this explosion from Hamas.
Precautions are all the more necessary as we unfortunately do not have means of verification on site. Access to this territory is in fact prohibited by the Israeli army, and the international press is absent. The writing of the World can only collect testimonies thanks to poor telephone or Internet connections, depending on the electricity supply provided by Israel, and from civilians under permanent threat of bombing.
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