Two days after the explosion outside the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, October 17, which sparked a wave of indignation across the Arab world, Palestinians and Israelis continue to trade blame for the tragedy, in which an as yet unconfirmed number of civilians died.

Several videos of the blast and the seconds preceding it, broadcast notably on the Al Jazeera channel, were studied by numerous military experts. The images show a salvo of rockets, fired from Palestinian territory, in the dark of night, at 6:59 pm local time. One of the rockets exploded in mid-air, but it wasn't clear why. A few seconds later was the first explosion on the ground, which was then followed by a second at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

Images of the damage caused by the explosion, taken during daylight the following day, were also published on social media. They depict a hole of limited diameter and depth in the hospital parking lot, corresponding to the supposed point of impact of the exploding projectile. Burnt-out cars can be seen all around, but the perimeter of the damage seemed relatively circumscribed, and the hospital buildings appeared to be largely unharmed.

Military experts accustomed to working with open-source material have not reached an agreement on what the images say about the explosion, where it came from, and who fired it. A number of them, notably Justin Bronk, a researcher at the London think-tank RUSI, who specializes in aviation issues, are leaning towards the Israeli army's theory, that of a malfunctioning rocket that was fired from Gaza. They suppose that the projectile, fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group allied to Hamas, was intercepted by the "Iron Dome," Israel's anti-aircraft defense system, before falling on the hospital's parking lot and garden, where there were many civilians. The size of the impact on the ground appeared to be incompatible with that of a bombing raid, according to experts, particularly by means of a guided bomb – known as a JDAM – a weapon traditionally used by the Israeli Air Force.

"The Iron Dome normally only hits [fire towards Israel] from 4 km away," said Colonel Michel Goya, a military historian and author of several books on the Middle East, including Israël contre le Hezbollah: Chronique d'une défaite annoncée, 12 juillet-14 août 2006 ("Israel against Hezbollah: Chronicle of a defeat foretold, July 12-August 14, 2006", 2014). The hospital was located 3.5 km west of the fortified fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel. "The rocket could have been hit by a SPYDER missile [an Israeli missile used as an interceptor]," said Goya, avoiding any definitive conclusion.

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