So… setting aside the source of this explosive for a moment (because there’s a lot of speculation and no firm answer yet), can we all agree that there’s no way this killed 500 people? The impact crater is about the size of a sewer manhole (there’s one near it in the panorama image in the article).
The initial reporting on this was sensationalized to generate outrage and sympathy.
Video of the aftermath. It’s horrific. ~500 is accurate. When half of them are children it doesn’t take up as much space as you think.
spoiler
Seriously, don’t click unless you’re ok seeing a lot of dead kids https://twitter.com/LocalFocus1/status/1714340397298733479
The video is horrific indeed - but fortunately (!) way less than than the first reported amount of people died. It is hard to really count but in the video itself it seem that less than 50 dead are shown. We don’t know if every casualty was filmed though.
The tweet itself still blames Israel for this, so the source doesn’t even pretend to be neutral/news.
Estimation at best. They probably knew about 500 people were there, but had no idea of a body count.
That being said, a lot of people were sleeping in the grass next to the impact site, and some in the parking lot. They are estimating around 200-300 people. Some of the people in the grass were already dead.
But most were using it as temporary sleeping area due to the destruction of their home.
Last point I’ll talk about is that this crater was not caused by an airstrike like Hamas claimed. And the hospital is not destroyed which they also claimed. And the ballistics show that it would have come from not Hamas, but the other faction in the region, the Islamic Jihad group territory.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It seems I owe a few people here an apology.
It shows a strong character, moral compass, openness and social skills to publicly change your opinion/stance.
You have my highest respect.
