The United States has concluded that Israel is not to blame for the explosion at a hospital in Gaza that has left hundreds of people dead.
Video of the explosion late Tuesday at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza quickly circulated on television and social media, sparking outrage and protests in countries across the region.
But U.S. officials said a detailed review of intelligence streams, overhead imagery and images of the incident show the damage could not have been caused by an Israeli strike.
"The U.S. government assesses that Israel was not responsible," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement shared with VOA late Wednesday.
Watson said the U.S. assessment took into account information gleaned from Washington's ability to monitor missile activity, as well as what militants on the ground said following the blast.
"Intelligence indicates that some Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip believed that the explosion was likely caused by an errant rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, she said.
Watson's assertion aligns with evidence provided by Israel earlier Wednesday, including what it says is an intercepted audio recording of two Hamas operatives that it shared on social media.
"They are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad," one of the operatives says in the recording, according to a translation provided by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF.
"Is it from us?" asks the second alleged Hamas operative.
The first operative responds, "It looks like it."
The IDF also released drone video taken of the Ahli Arab Hospital and its surroundings before and after the explosion, showing where a fire ravaged part of the hospital's parking lot and damage from shrapnel. But the IDF said there is no evidence of a significant crater, which would have been created had the blast been caused by Israeli ordnance.
The Israeli version of what happened at the hospital in Gaza also got a boost from U.S. President Joe Biden, who spoke during a visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday while visiting with Israeli first responders and families of the victims of the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians.
"Based on the information we've seen to date, it appears as a result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza," Biden said.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad has rejected the accusations.
Hamas, which decried the explosion Tuesday as a "crime of genocide," leveled more criticism at Israel and the U.S. on Wednesday.
"The U.S. adoption of the Israeli narrative makes it involved in the Gaza massacres," the militant group said Wednesday in a statement in English on its Telegram channel.
In a separate statement, Hamas accused Israel of "trying to evade their responsibility" for what the militant group labeled "a genocidal massacre."
"It is obviously known that the resistance's missiles are somewhat 'primitive' and do not have the destructive power that kills hundreds at one time," the Hamas statement said, adding, "It is no secret that [Israel], several days ago, threatened several hospitals in the Gaza Strip."
Some videos and images posted Wednesday on social media do show what might be an impact crater in the parking lot next to the hospital.
"The ground surrounding one side of the crater shows a cone of scarring and pitting, consistent with the explosion of a munition at this site," according to an initial analysis published by Bellingcat, a fact-checking and open-source intelligence group based in the Netherlands.
"Objects within this cone appear to have suffered extensive damage, including a fence, which was largely destroyed by the explosion," the Bellingcat analysis said.
But Bellingcat also said, "The impact point does not appear to be consistent with the 500, 1,000 or 2,000-pound bombs used in [Israeli] Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs."
The U.S. National Security Council said officials are continuing to review the intelligence "to corroborate whether it was a failed PIJ rocket" that caused the deaths of so many at the Ahli Arab Hospital.
However, key U.S. lawmakers briefed on the U.S. intelligence agree the evidence exonerates Israel.
"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," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio said in a statement Wednesday.
The U.S. has been bolstering its intelligence-gathering capabilities in the region in the days before the explosion at the hospital in Gaza City.
A senior U.S. defense official said last week that the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group was sent to the eastern Mediterranean, in part, because of its ability to carry out intelligence collection.
