Shocking moment ‘missile’ hits refugee camp at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, hitting a civilian and sparking panic – but was it Israeli strike or Hamas rocket misfire?

This is the shocking moment an apparent missile struck a refugee camp at Gaza City’s biggest hospital, hitting a civilian and sparking panic.

Hamas-run local authorities in Gaza accused the Israeli military of shelling areas around hospitals in the north of the coastal strip, including the Al-Shifa hospital, where an estimated 60,000 people have taken refuge. The Rantisi children’s hospital and the Indonesian hospital had come under fire overnight, Hamas authorities said.

They said Friday that a strike on the hospital had killed 13 people. 

‘Thirteen martyrs and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on Al-Shifa compound today’ in central Gaza City, a government statement said, giving a toll AFP news agency said it was not immediately able to independently verify.

Footage from Al-Shifa hospital’s courtyard overnight appeared to show one of the strikes, although it was impossible to verify its origin from the footage. Another clip also appeared to show the bloody aftermath of another attack this morning.

Amid uncertainty of which side was behind the strike, Israel continued to rain down missiles on other parts of Gaza. Pictures looking into the strip from outside showed huge plumes of smoke and dirt being blasted hundreds of feet into the air.

Palestinian officials say that more than 10,800 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its bombardment of the territory in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack, which saw 1,400 killed in the Jewish state and 240 taken hostage.

Video, shot at night, opens with a view of the black sky above the hospital with the sound of what could be an aircraft and a projectile piercing the air. 

For a brief second, the missile is seen incoming at an extreme speed, before slamming into the ground somewhere off to the right of the camera. There is a blast, followed by several more ‘pops’ as shrapnel explodes from the blast zone. 

The camera spins to show the inside of makeshift tents in the courtyard, where people who had just been sleeping and resting wake up in a panic.

The person filming walks through the tents and shows the scene unfolding in an open part of the court yard, where a man appears to have been struck in the blast.

There is a spray of blood on the flood, and his leg is twisted at an unnatural angle.

As others in the camp scatter in panic, a group of men with stretcher run to the man’s aid. The footage ends with them attending to him on the ground.

Palestinian media published the video footage on Friday, that it said showed the aftermath of an Israeli attack on the parking lot.

A second view of the hospital, filmed by a camera overlooking the courtyard, also shows the moment the mortar strikes. As with the first clip, the sound of a loud explosion sends panic through the outdoor camp. 

The origin of the missile was not immediately clear from the footage. 

This morning, daytime videos have also been circulating online that show what appear to be dead and injured children and panic outside the outpatient’s clinic. 

Reuters news agency said it was able to verify the footage of casualties outside the front of the hospital, but not who launched the projectile.

The news agency said it was able to confirm the location from one of the children seen in the daytime video, a girl wearing dark trousers and a purple t-shirt, who is also seen in other footage at the entrance of the hospital.

MailOnline was unable to independently verify any of the videos, but the two nighttime videos have been geolocated to Al-Shifa hospital.

Officials in Gaza and aid groups have frequently accused Israel of targeting hospitals despite them being places of refuge for thousands.

Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals including Al-Shifa to hide its military operations. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged bombardments.

However, the IDF is understood to have been getting closer to the hospital in recent days, underneath which – Israel says – Hamas hides its Gaza headquarters.

Last week, an airstrike on Al-Shifa hospital targeted an ambulance. Israel admitted to the attack, saying the vehicle was being used by Hamas terrorists.

Another blast at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 killed scores, but the origin of the strike remains contested, with both sides accusing the other of the attack.

Israel presented what it said was evidence showing it was caused by a rocket fired by a Palestinian terror group from inside Gaza.

The month-old Israeli military campaign to wipe out Hamas, following the militants’ October 7 raid on southern Israel, has left Gaza’s hospitals struggling to cope, as medical supplies, clean water and fuel to power generators have been running out.

Gaza’s health ministry has said 18 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals and 40 other health centres were out of service either due to damage from shelling or lack of fuel.

Israel’s bombardment and siege of Gaza has created a humanitarian catastrophe with thousands seeking medical treatment and shelter in the few hospitals still open. Those in the combat zone operate in grave danger.

‘The Israeli occupation launched simultaneous strikes on a number of hospitals during the past hours,’ Gaza Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra told Al Jazeera television.

Qidra said an Israeli strike hit a courtyard in the Al Shifa hospital, the biggest in Gaza City, causing casualties, but he did not provide details.

The IDF said it was looking into reports of the Al Shifa hospital blast.

‘While the world sees neighbourhoods with schools, hospitals, scout groups, children’s playgrounds and mosques, Hamas sees an opportunity to exploit,’ Israel’s military said in a statement.

Indonesia’s foreign ministry said on Friday there were explosions near the Indonesian Hospital overnight, which damaged parts of the hospital, located at the northern end of the narrow coastal enclave. It did not say who was responsible for the explosion and it did not report any deaths or injuries.

‘Indonesia once again condemns the savage attacks on civilians and civilian objects, especially humanitarian facilities in Gaza,’ the ministry said in a statement.

Israel says 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 240 taken hostage by Hamas in the October 7 raid that triggered the Israeli assault.

Israel says it has lost 35 soldiers in Gaza.

Palestinian officials said 10,812 Gaza residents had been killed as of Thursday, about 40 percent of them children, in air and artillery strikes.

Israel’s military advance on central Gaza City, which brought tanks within a mile of Al Shifa, according to residents, has raised questions about how Israel will interpret international laws on protecting medical centres and displaced people there.

Deadly air strikes on refugee camps, a medical convoy and near hospitals have already prompted fierce arguments among some of Israel’s Western allies over its military’s adherence to international law.

Meanwhile, Israel has agreed pauses in its offensive in northern Gaza that will allow some civilians to flee heavy fighting, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out any broader ceasefire as a ‘surrender’ to Hamas. 

Asked if there would be a ‘stoppage’ in fighting, Netanyahu said on the Fox News Channel: ‘No. The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period of a few hours here or a few hours there, we want to facilitate the safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fight and we’re doing that.’

The Israeli military has allowed some wounded Palestinian civilians to cross into Egypt for treatment.

US President Joe Biden said in a post on Thursday that Israel has ‘an obligation to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and fully comply with international law.’

The White House confirmed on Thursday that Israel had agreed to pause military operations in parts of north Gaza for four hours a day.

The pauses, which would allow people to flee along two humanitarian corridors and could be used for the release of hostages, were significant first steps, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said.

Aid groups have pleaded for a full ceasefire, warning of a humanitarian ‘catastrophe’ in Gaza, where food, water and medicine are in short supply.

‘It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up: how am I going to feed the children today,’ Amal al-Robayaa told AFP in Rafah, where she was sheltering with her husband, six children, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren at a UN school.

Oxfam France director Cecile Duflot said staff were reporting ‘the worst, the most tragic situation that they have ever seen’ in the territory.

Complicating Israel’s military push is the fate of around 240 hostages abducted on October 7.

CIA director Bill Burns and David Barnea, head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, were in Doha for talks on pauses that would include hostage releases and more aid for Gaza, an official told AFP.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad released a video Thursday claiming to show two hostages – a woman in her 70s and a 13-year-old boy – which, if verified, would suggest not all captives are held by Hamas.

Israel’s military slammed the video as ‘psychological terrorism’.

Four hostages have been freed so far, and the desperate relatives of those still held have piled pressure on Israeli and US authorities to secure the release of their loved ones.

‘We don’t sleep well. We don’t eat well,’ Ronen Neutra, whose son Omer is being held hostage, told AFP news agency in an interview. ‘Everything stopped.’

Inside Gaza, the intense combat and effective blockade of the densely populated territory have led to increasingly dire conditions.

Donors at an aid conference in Paris have pledged around $1.1 billion, but access to Gaza remains very limited, with around 100 trucks a day able to enter, far below the pre-war average.

‘In our most conservative scenario, this conflict is likely to set back development (in the Palestinian territories) by well over a decade,’ UNDP administrator Achim Steiner told AFP. Israeli officials however insist there is ‘no humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza.

Violence has surged in the occupied West Bank since the conflict erupted, with at least 14 Palestinians killed on Thursday alone, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

The conflict has also stoked regional tensions, with cross-border exchanges between the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels saying they launched ‘ballistic missiles’ at southern Israel.

A drone hit a school in southern Israel’s Eilat on Thursday and Israeli air defences later intercepted a missile over the Red Sea, the military said.

On Friday, the military said it struck the source of the drone, in Syrian territory.

It did not identify the organisation behind the drone, but said it ‘holds the Syrian regime fully responsible for every terror activity emanating from its territory.’