(Adds dropped word “said” in first paragraph)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s military said on Wednesday it had seen no evidence of a direct hit on a hospital in the Gaza Strip the day before, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in an explosion.
A military spokesperson told journalists that there was no structural damage to buildings around the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital and no craters consistent with an air strike.
The spokesperson accused Hamas of inflating the number of casualties from the explosion and said it could not know as quickly as it claimed what caused the blast.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, blamed the deadly blast on Israel. Israel says it was a result of a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in the enclave. The spokesperson added that some 450 rockets fired from Gaza have fallen short and landed inside the strip in the last 11 days.
(This story has been corrected to add a dropped word ‘said’ in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Dan Williams, writing by John Davison, Editing by Alex Richardson)
