Seems Gaza hospital strike 'done by other team': Biden tells Netanyahu

'Based on what I have seen, it was done by the other team, not you,' US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday

US President Joe Biden landed on Wednesday in Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the attack on Tuesday night on the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, where hundreds are feared dead, appears to have been carried out by the "other team, not you."

"Based on what I have seen, it was done by the other team, not you," Biden said, adding, "But there's a lot of people out there who are not sure. So we've got to overcome a lot of things."

Biden said that he's "deeply saddened and outraged by the incident," and that "the US will continue to support Israel." However, he did not provide evidence for his remarks that Palestinian militants might have caused the deadly explosion.

 

The US has thrown its full support behind Israel since Hamas launched its violent attack on October 7, triggering massive Israeli retaliation. Washington has also sent two aircraft carriers to the region in order to deter other parties from entering the war.

"I'm looking forward to having a discussion about what happens from here," Biden told Netanyahu.

Also Read: Israel-Gaza war: Nations call for peaceful resolution; latest updates here

Netanyahu said "the civilised world must unite to defeat Hamas" and added "we will defeat Hamas and remove this terrible threat from our lives."

Hundreds are feared to have been killed in an attack on the al-Ahli hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip where patients, healthcare workers and internally displaced people were sheltering.

The information war around the hospital explosion has also heated up in the hours since the attack. Hamas swiftly blamed the attack on an Israeli air strike, but the Israeli military denied it was responsible and said the hospital was hit by a rocket misfired by the Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad.

Speaking in the Egyptian capital Cairo, earlier on Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a "thorough investigation" into the attack on the hospital, saying "we still do not know exactly what happened."

The catastrophic explosion comes as the war between Israel and Hamas ramps up, more than a week after militants from the Palestinian group stormed out of the Gaza Strip and killed more than a thousand Israelis in a violent attack.

Israel has since hit back by conducting a siege of Gaza, rocking the region with continual air strikes and killing more than 3,000 Palestinians, according to authorities in Gaza.

(With agency input)