Trudeau not ready to accept U.S. finding that Palestinian outfit was behind Gaza hospital blast
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that Canadian officials are still reviewing evidence about the Gaza hospital blast that killed and maimed many Palestinian civilians and he’s not prepared to say who’s responsible.
That’s a departure from what U.S. President Joe Biden and American national security services have said about the explosion. There are conflicting reports about how many people died in the blast.
“We are working closely with allies to determine exactly what happened,” Trudeau told a press conference with Caribbean leaders in Ottawa.
“We saw some preliminary evidence but we’ll keep working with our allies as quickly as possible before reaching any firm and final conclusion,” Trudeau said in French, adding that many communities here in Canada are “personally affected in an intensive way by what happened over there.”
He said Canada is “taking the necessary time to look carefully at everything” before saying what it believes transpired Tuesday at the Anglican Church-run facility in Gaza City.
During a wartime visit to Israel on Wednesday, Biden said the U.S. defence department showed him intelligence that suggests the explosion at the Ahli Arab Hospital likely was not caused by an Israeli airstrike.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson later said that an analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information” showed Israel was not behind the attack.
The Democratic and Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee issued a statement after reviewing the evidence that’s been gathered so far.
“We feel confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike,” said Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Marco Rubio, the committee’s leaders.
Hamas has blamed an Israeli airstrike for the blast.
The Israeli military has said a misfired rocket launched by other Palestinian militants was behind the explosion.
Anglican church officials have said an untold number of Palestinian refugees were camped out in the hospital courtyard when the explosion hit Tuesday.
Images gathered by BBC News, the Associated Press and Reuters show that the hospital is still standing after the blast but there are blown-out windows, a small crater in the pavement near the site and burned-out vehicles and overturned cars nearby.
