US. President Joe Biden told a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that Israel did not appear to be responsible for a deadly blast at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening, which has enflamed tensions across the Middle East.
“I’m deeply saddened and outraged at the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, and not you. But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure,” Biden said in a joint press briefing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president was making his comments as he began a trip to Israel to signal U.S. solidarity for the country in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 and resulted in the taking of 199 hostages.
Hamas has said the hospital explosion was due to an Israeli airstrike, but the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) presented photographic evidence on Wednesday that it said showed Israel was not responsible for the blast which killed hundreds of patients and sheltering civilians.
The IDF is pointing the finger instead at a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. The group immediately issued a statement refuting the IDF accusations.
The blast unleashed a raft street protests across the Middle East overnight, including an attempt to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
It comes amid growing worldwide condemnation of the developing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where more than 3,000 people have died since Israel began its bombing campaign, while 2.1 million population is facing water and food shortages and is without electricity.
Biden was to have travelled on to neighboring Jordan for a summit with Arab world leaders including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, but Jordan cancelled the meeting in response to the Gaza hospital blast.
Against this backdrop, Biden reiterated his support for Israel in the press conference, declaring: “I want to say to the people of Israel: Their courage, their commitment, their bravery, is stunning… I am proud to be here.”
Biden is expected to discuss Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks and its plans for securing the release of hostages in meetings with Netanyahu, Herzog and the Israeli war cabinet at the Kirya military compound in Tel Aviv.
Family members of the people taken hostage as gathered outside the base holding banners calling for their missing loved ones to be brought back home safely.