Hundreds said killed in Gaza hospital blast
A Gaza health ministry spokesman said hundreds were killed in a blast at a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other and that ignited protests in the West Bank and around the Middle East, Reuters reports.
Health authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip said an Israeli air strike caused the blast while Israel's military attributed it to a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.
The health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said early on Wednesday that hundreds were killed and rescue workers were still removing bodies from the rubble. In the first hours after the blast, a Gaza civil defence chief said 300 people were killed, while health ministry sources put the figure at 500.
Before Tuesday's blast, health authorities in Gaza said at least 3,000 people had died in Israel's 11-day bombardment that began after a Hamas Oct. 7 rampage on southern Israeli communities in which 1,300 people were killed and around 200 were taken into Gaza as hostages.
Gaza, a 45 km-long (25-mile) enclave home to 2.3 million people, has been ruled since 2006 by Hamas, an Islamist group that is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.
