this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

So... setting aside the source of this explosive for a moment (because there's a lot of speculation and no firm answer yet), can we all agree that there's no way this killed 500 people? The impact crater is about the size of a sewer manhole (there's one near it in the panorama image in the article).

The initial reporting on this was sensationalized to generate outrage and sympathy.

[–] HuddaBudda@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Estimation at best. They probably knew about 500 people were there, but had no idea of a body count.

That being said, a lot of people were sleeping in the grass next to the impact site, and some in the parking lot. They are estimating around 200-300 people. Some of the people in the grass were already dead.

But most were using it as temporary sleeping area due to the destruction of their home.

Last point I'll talk about is that this crater was not caused by an airstrike like Hamas claimed. And the hospital is not destroyed which they also claimed. And the ballistics show that it would have come from not Hamas, but the other faction in the region, the Islamic Jihad group territory.

It seems I owe a few people here an apology.

[–] dumdum666@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems I owe a few people here an apology.

It shows a strong character, moral compass, openness and social skills to publicly change your opinion/stance.

You have my highest respect.

[–] AnagrammadiCodeina@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

No it doesn't or at least it shouldn't. That should be the norm.

[–] hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

triage. These people were at a hospital. The hospital almost certainly knew how many people were waiting on care

[–] takeda@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

There's no incentive for Hamas to not lie and not overestimate. What are they have to lose? Best case it will go heavily against Israel, worst case? There's no bad case.

We started with a hospital being hit by Israeli, 500 dead, now looks like Hamas' rocket struck parking lot and soon we learn that only few cars got damaged.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This is the thing I've been thinking about a lot. I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near that explosion, but aftermath sure doesn't seem to line up with "500 people killed in hospital collapse caused by explosion". I don't even see a collapsed building in the panorama shot. Somebody's lying their ass off, and I have no idea who it is.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Based on the pictures in the article, there was definitely some damage to nearby buildings, particularly the roofs of the two buildings to the south. But "collapsed" seems to be sensationalism/clickbait. For that I would blame the journalists doing the reporting.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago

The other issue is that Hamas released that death count less than thirty minutes after the explosion. There's no way to get an accurate number that quickly.

A pretty plausible scenario is that they realized the fuck up, which probably did cause an extensive number of casualties given that the courtyard was apparently full of civilians, and immediately pushed a story about Israel catastrophically bombing a hospital in order to deflect attention, in hopes that western media would repeat the story without question, which was of course a correct assumption.

[–] antidote101@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's known that their hospital system has servere levels of over crowding, and the article states both that:

The video shows cots, blankets, and other personal belongings on the grassy area. Taken together, these two videos indicate that it was likely occupied by people who were resting or sleeping there at the time of the explosion.

And that:

Other images from the parking lot of the hospital show widespread damage to vehicles in the parking lot, including one that was flipped over onto its roof. Another vehicle nearby shows signs of extensive damage, while others show evidence that they were engulfed in flames.

...an over crowded space, babies in cots, with an explosion large enough to flip a car, near one of the few areas with grass soft enough to sleep on.

Plus a fire.

Plus due a hospital low on supplies, low on water, in need of emergency power... Could probably kill hundreds, and cause the death of more.

If the hospital had some structural damage as well. Could probably do plenty of killing. The article doesn't nominate a number, so I can't speak to your source on that.

[–] hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Video of the aftermath. It's horrific. ~500 is accurate. When half of them are children it doesn't take up as much space as you think.

spoilerSeriously, don't click unless you're ok seeing a lot of dead kids https://twitter.com/LocalFocus1/status/1714340397298733479

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Right, so, this video is addressed in the article:

A video posted on Twitter on Tuesday night showed a grassy area adjacent to the hospital covered with dead bodies. At least two dozen bodies are visible in this video. Bellingcat is not linking to the video due to its graphic nature.

Did you read the article?

Not to quibble, but two dozen != 500. The difference is significant because of the effect it has had on reporting on the incident.

[–] DoomBot5@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I'd understand if you tried defending 50, but 500?

[–] qdJzXuisAndVQb2@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

500 shows such bad faith, get real.

[–] hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's one thing to argue who did it because none of us are sure and "evidence" points in both directions but y'all are fucking monsters if you're going to try and downplay the scale of the violence with absolutely no evidence.

[–] norbert@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Almost as monstrous as using large, vague numbers with absolutely no evidence?

Ohh yeah the doctors on location picking up body parts everywhere def have no evidence.

[–] dumdum666@kbin.social -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The video is horrific indeed - but fortunately (!) way less than than the first reported amount of people died. It is hard to really count but in the video itself it seem that less than 50 dead are shown. We don’t know if every casualty was filmed though.

The tweet itself still blames Israel for this, so the source doesn’t even pretend to be neutral/news.