Israel struck twice in its attack on Muwasi, videos and photos show

A Gaza Civil Defense vehicle with shrapnel damage after an Israeli airstrike on the weekend. Photo / The New York Times

Visual evidence from Saturday’s strike in Gaza that left dozens dead appears to show that the Israeli military launched a separate strike near emergency vehicles.

The Israeli military launched an additional airstrike near emergency responders during a deadly barrage on a villa in the Gaza Strip this weekend aimed at the top Hamas military commander in the territory, videos and photographs reviewed by The New York Times show.

After several Israeli munitions hit the grounds of the villa in the Muwasi area Saturday morning, at least one additional, smaller missile hit a busy street outside the compound as emergency service workers were responding. It exploded directly in front of two vehicles clearly marked as belonging to Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, spraying them with shrapnel and apparently killing and injuring first responders.

The Israeli military said that it had “struck military targets of the utmost significance” but that the strike “will be examined.”

Israeli officials said the initial strike, which targeted Hamas commander Muhammad Deif, hit the compound with at least five precision-guided missiles. The blast near the rescue workers was nearly 90 metres away from the entrance to the compound, suggesting a separate strike.

In comparison with the first strike, which destroyed a building and buried Palestinians inside an enormous crater, the second was significantly smaller. Videos show the strike and its immediate aftermath from three different angles. All the videos show a plume of white smoke rising from a street crowded with rescuers, bystanders and people injured in the first strike.

In two of the videos, a loud whooshing sound can be heard before the explosion, indicating an airstrike, rather than an artillery blast or an explosion on the ground, said Wes Bryant, a retired US Air Force master sergeant who was responsible for choosing targets and assessing civilian casualties during the campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.

Bryant and Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said that shrapnel damage seen on one of the Civil Defense vehicles and two cars near the blast was consistent with a Spike or Mikholit missile, two munitions used by the Israeli military.

Both experts also said the Civil Defense vehicles would have been clearly visible to the soldiers launching the strikes. Bryant said that, in the Israeli military’s calculus, “any Hamas targets carry enough military necessity that any civilian loss is considered proportional.”

In the aftermath of the two blasts, videos captured people carrying dozens of dead and injured away from the scene, some of them in bright orange Gaza Civil Defense vests.

An aerial image of the first strike published by the Israeli military and analysed by the Times indicates the resulting crater was close to 18 metres in diameter, indicative of a 900kg bomb. President Joe Biden has paused the delivery of these weapons to Israel since May over concerns about the civilian casualties they might cause.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Riley Mellen

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