After US President Joe Biden's remark to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Gaza Strip hospital blast that claimed the lives of hundreds of people was done by "the other team" and not the Israeli military, and subsequent clarification that he based this claim on the data from the US department of defence, the White House sought to further substantiate the president's statement.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on Wednesday in a social media post that their analysis showed that Israel was not responsible for the blast.
"While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday," the tweet read.
Biden had earlier said that he had directed his national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened at the hospital.
There have been conflicting claims of who was responsible for the hospital blast. While officials in Gaza claimed that it was an Israeli airstrike, the latter denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a missile misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. The Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
Israel to allow aid to enter Gaza from Egypt
Meanwhile, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following Biden's demand, "Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt, as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip."
However, there was no mention of fuel.
"Israel will not allow any humanitarian aid from its territory to the Gaza Strip as long as our hostages are not returned," the statement from the prime minister's office said.