A new report, sourced to a European intelligence official, is providing clarity on the probable death toll at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, with the data showing that Hamas officials once again grossly misled the world.

As RedState reported, at 7:20 PM (local) on Tuesday, Hamas officials began to release claims that Israel had struck the hospital, resulting in at least 200 deaths. Within an hour, the death toll had supposedly reached 500. There were immediate reasons to ask questions, though.

By the next morning, multiple videos, including live coverage by the pro-Hamas channel Al Jazeera, revealed that a barrage of rockets had been released in Gaza at 6:59 PM. One can be seen malfunctioning, reversing direction, exploding, and hitting the hospital. Further evidence that Israel was not at fault followed, with a cellphone intercept showing Palestinian Islamic Jihad members discussing where the rocket was fired from and where it landed. 

If that wasn't enough proof, daylight video of the hospital proved definitive. Instead of a large crater, which would have been present had the explosion been an IAF bomb, only a small scuff in the ground existed while the rest of the damage was caused by burning fuel. Perhaps most importantly, despite claims of 500 people being dead, only the parking lot had been impacted, with the hospital itself (and the nearby chapel) being essentially undamaged. 

With that said, before we knew any of that, there was reason to question the death count put out by Hamas. Here's what I wrote at the time. 

For example, on its face, the reported death toll makes no sense. We are being asked to believe that in under an hour, Hamas was able to put out the fires, clear the rubble, and accurately count how many people died in the explosion. That is simply impossible, even as a close estimate. 

The best governments in the world would take a week to figure out a preliminary number of dead in a situation like this, yet the claimed death toll went from 200 initially to 500 within a few minutes, and within an hour, Hamas was claiming 900 dead. 

My caution was proven correct on Thursday. According to a European intelligence official, who spoke to AFP (France's largest press outlet), the actual death toll is somewhere between 10 and 50. 

This should have been obvious to anyone with any intellectual curiosity and honesty. Israel is still counting the dead from an attack that occurred nearly two weeks ago. Why? Because it takes time to recover bodies, identify them, and accurately count them. It was also completely impossible that "Palestinian Health Authorities," otherwise known as Hamas, had garnered an accurate death toll within an hour. There were actually videos of the fire in the parking lot still burning while Hamas was claiming to know exactly how many died. 

Even in the aftermath, Hamas "corrected" its count to 471, but that too was obviously farcical. The parking lot at the hospital is relatively small, and even if you had people standing shoulder to shoulder, you wouldn't end up with that kind of death toll. In reality, all the people in the vicinity were camping out on a grass area closer to the hospital's main building. There were deaths there, but nowhere near 471. 

Instead, as many suspected, it now appears that Hamas overreported the deaths not just by a little bit, but by an order of magnitude, with actual deaths being perhaps 50x lower. And yet, world press outlets are continuing to repeat Hamas death tolls as authoritative. 

Here was NBC News two days after the explosion, well after it was clear the hospital had not even been struck. 

It's astonishing. We have ample evidence that "Palestinian health officials" grossly inflate death tolls for propaganda reasons, including this latest example, and these press outlets continue to cite them without a second thought. You may think you distrust the press, but you don't distrust them enough.