It is still unclear what exploded at the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza on October 17. Given the limited damage, it must have been an artillery rocket, of the type that also includes Grad rockets. But there is not a single photo showing remains of the weapon and the various videos that seemed to show that it was a ‘returner’ from southern Gaza turned out to be misinterpreted. The Danish Osint researcher Oliver Alexander showed it on October 22, later it was confirmed by teams of The New York Times and the WashingtonPost.
The alleged dropout who figures in the famous Al Jazeera video turned out to be an interceptor missile from Israel’s Iron Dome system. It also appears on another video and because the camera position is known for both videos, a cross bearing could be used to determine where the interceptor missile was active. That was above Israel, many kilometers away from the hospital. It suddenly became clear how the dismissal was going two could explode once, once in the air and once on the ground: he didn’t do that at all.
Just before the explosion in the hospital courtyard, Hamas or Islamic Jihad launched a dozen rockets from a location three miles (4.8 km) southwest of the hospital. The Israeli army had already shown this in edited radar imagesit has been confirmed by the WashingtonPost. Some of the rockets flew over the hospital and it is therefore possible that one of them malfunctioned and crashed. According to Israel, more than 8 percent of Palestinian rockets in the Gaza Strip.
But there is no footage of the crash. The Al Jazeera camera, which happened to look straight through the entrance gate into the courtyard, showed a fireball and then a bright fire that stayed in one place. Other videos showed erratically burning cars. The explosion was not serious, the impact crater between the lawns where many Gazans took shelter is shallow and less than 90 cm wide. The glass damage is limited. It’s puzzling.
A hollow block of propellant
It is believed that Hamas is predominantly self-made Qassam rockets fires. These are primitive rockets that were first used in 2001 and have since been upgraded but have not changed significantly. Qassams consist of steel tubes filled with a hollow block of propellant (a mixture of potassium nitrate and sugar) and fitted with a warhead weighing about ten kilos at the top. The material of the warhead varies but is said to consist mainly of urea nitrate and military explosives. As detonators (contact fuses) percussion caps from rifle cartridges are used. At the bottom of the rocket are stabilization fins and the crucial ones nozzle (nozzle) that accelerates the hot combustion gases of the propellant. The propellant is ignited electrically.
Qassam rockets are unguided rockets. When the propellant has burned out, they simply fall back to Earth under their own speed and weight. For each new target, the picket fence that serves as a firing device is brought into the correct position. This has been determined experimentally and requires formidable standardization of the missiles.
There’s plenty that can go wrong. The – handmade – rocket can wobble in flight due to its asymmetrical construction and go off course. The connection between ‘rocket motor’ (the tube segment containing the propellant) and warhead can break and the nozzle can come loose or burn out. And much more. You like to believe that something went wrong on October 17th.
Subsonic speed
The problem is that the Qassams’ propellant only burns for about five seconds, rarely longer. You see it in the videosthe literature mentions it and it can also be calculated. It is also certain that the rockets are subsonic Certainly do not fly faster than the speed of sound (330 m/s). This means that a Qassam takes at least 15 seconds to cover the distance between the assumed launch position and the hospital (4.8 km). The experts who WashingtonPost consulted came to 25 to 45 seconds. Then the rocket must have arrived over the hospital completely burned out and could not have produced the sea of flames that were filmed.
Unless it was caused by the exploding warhead, which experts do not consider very likely. The fireball appears to be too large for this and the ‘shrapnel’ impacts (such as ball bearing balls or nails and bolts) that Hamas attaches to the warhead are missing. On the other hand, the Israeli army has announced that the crater found corresponds to what a Qassam head often causes. But a rocket that crashes back to Earth from a great height without exploding can also leave a crater, learned classical research.
Here’s the core question: was it the warhead or something else? It is in principle possible that a Qassam rocket was launched close to the hospital during the aforementioned barrage, although it was probably seen by Al Jazeera’s camera. It could also be that a Chinese or Iranian-made rocket was fired, because Hamas receives deliveries from abroad in a piecemeal manner. You effortlessly come up with other scenarios.
One criterion that has not been used so far is the color of the smoke rising from the early conflagration. Above the late blaze, that of the burning cars, there is unmistakable black smoke. But with a little imagination, perhaps too much imagination, you could argue that the early smoke is white. That is the smoke color that the burning propellant produces. There are plenty of examples of this, because many American rocket enthusiasts use it to build theirs ‘candy rockets’ same propellant: potassium nitrate with sugar or glucose. So smoke color research, something can still be expected from that.