At 6:59 PM local time, an explosion rocked the Al-Maamdani Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The hospital’s location in central Gaza City is shown below.

Palestinians were quick to accuse Israel of bombing the hospital, but Israel has denied responsibility, leading to a significant amount of contradictory information being floated online, including doctored videos from propagandists on both sides. In this article, I attempt to identify the facts.

Timeline of Events

6:59 PM, October 17 — Al Jazeera (a pro-Palestinian news source) livestreams footage of a rocket launched from within Gaza that appears to break up mid flight and then fall to the ground in two pieces, causing explosions where each piece impacts. One piece appears to hit the Baptist hospital.

Google Maps confirms the location by showing the same rooftop structure on an adjacent building as can be seen in the video.

The footage shows about 6-7 seconds between when the rocket breaks up and when the hospital is hit. Physics tells us that during that time, the rocket would have fallen around 177-240 meters, assuming it had no upward momentum at the moment it broke up. That appears consistent with the footage.

7:28 PM, October 17 — Al Jazeera posts on X to accuse Israel of bombing the Baptist Hospital in central Gaza.

(Estimated) 7:40 PM, October 17 — Israeli government influencer Hananya Naftali makes a (now deleted) post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that the IDF bombed the hospital because it was being used as a Hamas base.

7:57 PM, October 17 — Al Jazeera posts on X, claiming that a Gaza Ministery of Health spokesperson estimated more than 200 deaths from a bombing of Al-Maamdani Hospital

8:40 PM, October 17 — Another pro-Palestinian news agency publishes a video on X accusing the IDF of bombing the hospital. This video appears to show the same explosion from a different angle and closer proximity. X user Jack Godin later synchronized the footage to show a direct comparison.

9:06 PM, October 17 — The Israel War Room, a pro-Israel nonprofit, publishes a video on X purporting to show a Hamas rocket misfiring and hitting the hospital.

9:25 PM, October 17 — Hananya Naftali posts on X to state that he believes the hospital explosion was either caused by a failed rocket or an intentional act of Palestinians to garner international outrage against Israel. However, Hananya does not address the elephant in the room which is his earlier post (now deleted) claiming Israel was responsible for the hospital’s destruction.

11:00 PM, October 17 — The IDF issued a statement on X claiming that Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian terrorist organization affiliated with Hamas, launched a rocket which malfunctioned and hit the hospital.

12:58 AM, October 18 — Hananya Naftali posted on X to explain why he deleted an earlier post claiming Israel was responsible for the hospital’s destruction.

4:42 AM, October 18 — The @Israel government X account posts that IDF intelligence suggests a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket is responsible for the explosion at the hospital. However, the post also contains three confusing videos, including one video supposedly showing the explosion but timestamped an hour later than the actual explosion (7:59 PM local rather than 6:59 PM local) and a second video showing video timestamped October 18th instead of October 17th. Less than an hour later though, the post was edited to remove the videos.

10:00 AM, October 18 — IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari delivers a presentation to the BBC, claiming that Hamas knew the hospital was hit by a misfired rocket, not an IDF bomb, but intentionally claimed otherwise to garner international outrage. He also claims that IDF intelligence tracked the misfired rocket on radar and also obtained a recording of two Hamas members discussing the misfired rocket.

12:17 PM, October 18 — OSINTtechnical, an X user who works as an analyst at CNA, a nonprofit national security research organization based in Virginia, shares videos from the Russian news agency Tess, purporting to show the inside of the chapel adjacent to the hospital as well as from the parking lot where the explosion happened.

Many of the chapel windows are unbroken and no major impact crater is visible in the parking lot, further supporting the hypothesis that the explosion was caused by a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket which still carried a significant amount of fuel which was set ablaze upon impact.

From the scale of the visible damage, it’s hard to imagine more than 100 people could have been killed by the explosion even if many people were encamped outside the hospital. That contradicts the Gaza Ministry of Health claims that 500 or possibly 900 Palestinians were killed.

1:31 PM, October 18 — TASS, a Russian news agency, posts a photo on X showing the damage from the hospital explosion. Most immediately obvious is that the actual rocket or bomb hit the hospital parking lot, not the hospital itself. It’s also quite clear that the majority of the damage came not from the explosion itself but rather from the subsequent fire. The explosion itself could not have been exceptionally powerful since nearby trees are still standing and most of the windows in adjacent buildings appear to be unbroken.

1:59 PM, October 18 — Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, posts several images on X, including a diagram from IDF intelligence of Hamas & Islamic Jihad failed rocket locations and statistics, indicating around 10% of Palestinian rockets misfire.

4:27 PM, October 18 — Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, posts a video on X showing aerial footage of the hospital parking lot and surrounding buildings. The damage appears to be consistent from the photos published hours earlier by various news agencies — damage that appears to be primarily from a fuel fire rather than an IDF bomb explosion.

6:59 PM, October 18 — The Wall Street Journal publishes an article with additional photos and video of the hospital parking lot during daylight. The damage appears far too small to be caused by an IDF bomb.

Conclusion

More than likely, Islamic Jihad, a Gaza-based terrorist organization strongly affiliated with Hamas, launched a rocket which malfunctioned during flight and landed in the hospital parking lot where it exploded. The explosion and resulting fire likely killed 50-100 Palestinians who were sheltered mostly outside the hospital. Hamas then intentionally decided to blame Israel for the explosion in order to stir up international outrage at Israel and the U.S. At the same time, Israel propagandists like Hananya Naftali and the social media team behind accounts like @Israel were quick to defend Israel before they actually knew what happened. They made the assumption that the IDF must have bombed the hospital because Hamas was using it as a base, and they shared that narrative as well as unverified footage that turned out to be fake. Eventually, they retracted this information as new information became available.

There could still be inaccuracies in that conclusion, but as of now it seems the most likely explanation for the events of the past 36 hours.