A 33-year-old Dutch woman has been killed in an explosion in Gaza. Islam al-Ashqar was visiting relatives at the Nusairat refugee camp in central Gaza and was one of 22 Dutch nationals the ministry was trying to help leave. Israel bombed the local evening market in the camp on Saturday night.
Oop, I definitely thought part of the building collapsed. Rereading though there was only “damage to buildings” not actual structural damage (though, again, the explosion was awfully large for a supposed rocket).
So how has Israel managed to confirm the death toll was lower than initially reported? They aren’t on the ground counting bodies.
The European and US intelligence services estimated the death toll at ~50 and 100-300 respectively.
I assume satellite imagery and counting…there’s probably also UAVs from all the great powers recording footage.
Seperately im fairly certain the Israeli security services have spies all over gaza. Somewhat grimly I think the air strikes have had a large component of people on the ground marking areas for strikes after confirming the presence of some Hamas member. It was a strategy exploited during the Russia/Ukraine war and it’s something Israelis can do because they are largely the same ethnicity.
As for the size of the explosion it’s not a great source but you can review pyrotechnic demonstrations of actual military munitions versus like a small special effects explosion and a lot of fuel. The former tends to not actually have a huge fire ploom like the hospital bombing had. There is one it’s just relatively small. If the rocket misfired and had a lot of ignited fuel spraying over the area… It causes that sort of imagery and casualties.
You’re putting a lot of faith in Western intelligence gathering - are you not at all worried that they’d underestimate the death toll to undermine the reporting coming from the Palestinians? Or that they’d cover up a mistake by Israel?
I think it’s a pretty verifiable thing and that both sides have motive to push prop.
One just caught lying about this already. I don’t mean historically I mean this actual incident.
Instead of waiting as long as we have the ordinance should have been shown through spokesmen immediately and at the press conference the ministry held surrounded by bodies.
It takes time to do a convincing fake. So I expect this debate will reignite later.
One possibility I’ve heard is there was a rocket intercepted midair, and then that downed rocket caused a secondary explosion. That’d make everyone look bad, though, so neither side wants to talk about it.
The ground invasion (if it ever happens) will make everyone forget about this anyway though.