On 17 October 2023, an explosion took place in the parking lot of the courtyard of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City during the Israel–Hamas war, resulting in a large number of displaced Palestinians seeking shelter there being killed or injured.
Reports of the number of deaths vary widely. Many English-language media outlets initially had reported the Gaza Health Ministry had concluded that over 500 were killed. Journalist David Zweig reported that this figure appears to have originated from a mistranslation of an Al Jazeera Arabic tweet, which is correctly translated as reporting over 500 total victims, including injuries, not 500 killed. The Gaza Health Ministry later reported a more precise figure of 471 killed and 342 wounded.[6][7][8] A report by Human Rights Watch questioned the Health Ministry's casualty figures.[9] The Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which manages the hospital, reported 200 people killed. US intelligence agencies assessed a death toll between 100 and 300.
The cause of the explosion is contested. Israel, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada said that their intelligence sources indicate the cause of the explosion was a failed rocket launch from within Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Hamas and PIJ stated the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike.[10]
Several sources considered that an errant rocket from Gaza was the likeliest explanation a week after the incident based on the evidence gathered in investigations conducted by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.[11] In late November 2023, Human Rights Watch also stated that the available evidence made an Israeli airstrike "highly unlikely".[9]Channel 4 News investigations contested Israeli claims of a misfired Hamas rocket being responsible for the blast.[12][13]Forensic Architecture concluded the blast was the result of a munition fired from Israel,[14] and cast doubt on the errant rocket launch theory in a visual investigation published on 15 February 2024, saying that "what happened at al-Ahli remains inconclusive".[15][16]