The statistics and events in the “news report” below are invented (plus ça change). However they give an idea of what a genuinely impartial news report would look like.
HEADLINE: CONFUSION AS TO NUMBERS IN RAFAH BOMB BLAST
It has been reported by 10 Gazan eyewitnesses that a bomb blast has gone off in Central Rafah. The BBC as well as other domestic and international journalists have been prevented from entering the enclave by the Israeli authorities and even if we were present, we would be unable to report freely. Either we would need to be embedded within the IDF or we would be subject to the terms of local Palestinian forces who would be unable to guarantee either our safety or freedom of speech.
We are therefore reliant for our information on local Gazans: some are civilians or genuine journalists who live in an authoritarian reality and are prevented from speaking freely. Others work for the Hamas government, an organisation proscribed as a terrorist entity by the US, UK, EU, Gulf Arab States and other countries and which was directly responsible for the terrorist attack and hostage taking on October 7th 2023. Meanwhile the United Nations is not currently present in Gaza and so its information is subject to the same caveats. We therefore cannot state with any accuracy the death figures or even the nature of the reported events themselves.
Given the fog of war and general misinformation, we will merely report the claims of others in respect of this incident. It will be for the reader to decide on the true account based on their estimation of the reliability of the sources.
The bomb blast took place exactly 1 hour ago in the environs of the building known as “Rafah Central Hospital”. It is disputed whether the bomb hit the hospital building itself or a nearby car park on the same site. It is also disputed whether the building continues to constitute a hospital. According to Hamas and the United Nations, the building is called Rafah Central Hospital and therefore is a hospital irrespective of the activities continuing within the building. According to an Israeli government spokesman, the East Wing of the hospital is a Hamas military base with large stockpiles of weapons as well as a command and control center, while the West Wing continues to operate as a medical facility and has never been targeted.
The Israeli government spokesman has admitted a rocket was fired into the car park five meters from the East Wing with the intention of destroying military infrastructure. It claims that no patients or medical officials were located in the East Wing or under the adjacent car park at the time. The spokesman says that, not being on the ground, the Israeli military are unclear about the total casualty figures, but nonetheless, intelligence suggests that 50 Hamas combatants operate in the centre on a regular basis and so based on previous similar attacks, it is likely that around 25 fighters perished in the incident.
The Israeli government spokesman further maintained that they are not aware of any civilian deaths, but that in any event and in line with the laws of war, they used leafleting and WhatsApp messaging to call for an evacuation prior to the strike. Any civilian deaths henceforth found to have taken place would constitute a “tragedy”, he maintained.
Meanwhile Hamas, through its representatives in Qatar, has claimed that precisely 50 people have died, the majority of whom they say are women and children. They reported the exact death figure and the class of victims just 5 minutes after the incident. Asked by a local person, claiming to be an independent journalist, what they thought about the claimed civilians deaths, the questioned fighter stated “They are martyrs for Palestine. God willing more blood will be spilt for the liberation of the Muslim lands”.
Hamas never lists combatants in its casualty figures, nor does it distinguish between 16 and 17 year old fighters and innocent children. The BBC is not in a position to verify the competing death figures nor to comment on how many civilians and combatants have died nor to confirm what in fact was targeted. We are merely able to report to viewers the competing claims.
In the event that we were to give equal weight to the information provided by the democratic Israeli government and the prescribed terrorist organization Hamas and to believe both equally, then the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in this incident would be 1:1. If repeated on a Gaza wide basis, this would mean that this conflict would be the least deadly for civilians in ratio terms in the modern history of warfare.
We apologise for not being able to shed any more light on the situation. It is to be hoped that following an extensive investigation, such as that which occurred in Mosul after the deadly urban fighting in that city, the facts will come to light in the coming years.
Please note that we refuse, as part of our commitment to impartiality, to produce an emotional photo whose source we are unable to corroborate.
We now turn to Sudan, Yemen and the DR Congo to find out the latest claimed death figures in those conflicts.
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Is the Problem of Evil Fatal for Theism?
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We can dream, but if anything its getting worse. It's quite distressing.
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