Hospital explosion: Palestinian envoy calls Netanyahu 'liar', cites tweet

The blame game continues to rage over the explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip, which is believed to have claimed 500 lives.

News reports quoted Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour, as accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “being a liar”.

This is after Netanyahu endorsed the Israeli military’s claim that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring.

"He is a liar. His digital spokesperson tweeted that Israel did the hit thinking that there was a base for Hamas around this hospital, and then he deleted that tweet. We have a copy of that tweet... Now they changed the story to try to blame the Palestinians," said Riyad.

He was referring to a tweet by Hananya Naftali, whose position in the Israeli government could not be ascertained.

In a separate tweet later, Hananya said he “mistakenly shared this information” and apologised.

“Earlier today, I shared a report that was published on Reuters about the bombing at the hospital in Gaza which falsely stated Israel struck the hospital.

“I mistakenly shared this information in a since-deleted post in which I referenced Hamas’ routine use of hospitals to store weapons caches and conduct terrorist activity. I apologise for this error,” he said in the tweet.

“As the IDF does not bomb hospitals, I assumed Israel was targeting one of the Hamas bases in Gaza. It is known that Hamas is using civilians as human shields, it is a war crime and a crime against humanity. This should be the focus,” he added.

Earlier, CNN reported Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari as stating that the lack of structural damage at the hospital showed that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were not involved.

The IDF also presented a 30-second montage, claiming that there were no visible signs of craters or substantial damage to buildings which would be the case in the event of an airstrike.

Meanwhile, BBC journalist Jackson Hinkle said: “It is hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes”.

“Because when we see rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale. We might see half a dozen, maybe a few more people being killed in such rocket attacks.

“But we have never seen anything on the scale of this sort of explosion on the video I was watching earlier, which is still to be verified,” he added.

On the other hand, CNN reported that the United States is analysing intelligence provided by Israel on the explosion.

This included signals intelligence, intercepted communications and other forms of data, it reported.

The explosion at the hospital drew widespread condemnation, including from Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who blamed Israel and urged it to “end the madness”.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said hospitals are sacrosanct and called for an end to the killings.

“Words fail me. Tonight, hundreds of people were killed – horrifically – in a massive strike… including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. Once again the most vulnerable,” he added in a statement, according to CNN.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, also condemned the incident.

“This is an appalling and devastating loss of innocent lives. The Ahli Hospital is run by the Anglican church. I mourn with our brothers and sisters - please pray for them.

“I renew my appeal for civilians to be protected in this devastating war. May the Lord God have mercy,” he tweeted.

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