The Israeli military has admitted its forces likely endangered civilian noncombatants during an airstrike in the Gaza Strip this week in which dozens of casualties were reported.
Israeli aircraft carried strikes on the central Gaza Strip town of Maghazi on Dec. 24 and 25, including at least one strike on a refugee camp operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Gaza-based health officials initially estimated at least 68 people were killed in the strike at the Maghazi Refugee Camp on Sunday, though the Associated Press subsequently reported records from the nearby hospital suggested up to 106 people may have been killed at the refugee camp.
In a statement shared with the Israeli state-owned broadcaster KAN News on Thursday, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said Israeli air forces conducted an internal investigation following the Sunday strike and determined “the type of weaponry used did not match the nature of the mission. As a result, there was extensive collateral damage that did not need to occur and could have been avoided.”
In an emailed press statement, an IDF spokesperson told NTD News that the strike in Maghazi on Sunday was directed against “two targets adjacent to which Hamas operatives were located.” The IDF spokesperson said the Israeli side had taken measures to mitigate risks to civilians prior to the strike, but said the strike likely still caused harm to civilians.
“A preliminary investigation revealed that additional buildings located near the targets were also hit during the strikes, which likely caused unintended harm to additional uninvolved civilians,” the IDF added.
The IDF spokesperson told NTD News it “regrets the harm caused to uninvolved civilians and is acting to draw conclusions and learn lessons from this event.”
The IDF official said further reviews of the Sunday strike in Maghazi would be handled by the IDF General Staff’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism, “which is responsible for investigating exceptional events that occur during combat.”
NTD News reached out to the IDF for further details about the types of munitions used in the Sunday strike, and how many civilian casualties it believes resulted from the strike, but did not receive a response.
Previous reports of civilian casualties coming out of Gaza have been treated with skepticism by the Israeli and international community, particularly after an Oct. 17 incident in which an explosion occurred at a hospital in Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas terrorist group’s political control over the Gaza Strip, attributed the explosion to an Israeli strike, but U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments later attributed the blast to an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization aligned with Hamas.
The Israeli side has offered few of their own assessments about the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, including those arising from Israeli actions.
The organization Médecins Sans Frontières (known in English as Doctors Without Borders), said bombing strikes on Dec. 24 hit the Maghazi Refugee Camp as well as another U.N. Relief and Works Agency location, the Bureij Refugee Camp about two miles north, resulting in a combined 131 deaths and 209 injuries. The organization claimed about half of those casualties were women and children.
The Biden administration recently broached the topic of Israel pursuing a lower intensity and “more surgical” phase of its ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip. At a Dec. 18 press conference U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he’d spoken with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant about “how to reduce harm to civilians” and said the United States could offer insights about how to transition to these lower intensity military operations. Mr. Gallant said the Israeli side could be open to beginning a less intense phase of the war but offered no timeline or specific conditions the Israel side would prefer to see before relaxing its military campaign.
Despite the Biden administration’s calls for the Israeli side to reduce risks to civilians and lower the overall intensity of the conflict, it has also rejected calls for a ceasefire, voting against U.N. Security Council measures seeking a more immediate cessation of hostilities.
The article was updated after an IDF spokesperson provided NTD News with an emailed press statement after publication. The emailed IDF statement did not address additional questions raised by NTD News.