CNN compared footage published by the IDF online with footage taken by Fox News, which was granted access to the site in the hours afterward. IDF Spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus leads the tour in the IDF video and a watch on his arm shows the time to be 13:18.
Fox News Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst later visits the scene when it is dark. He says in his report it is “the middle of the night”.
Yingst is shown a bag located behind an MRI machine inside the hospital with two AK-47 guns visible on top of it. However, the IDF video filmed earlier shows only one AK-47 gun. It is unclear where the second AK-47 gun came from and why it is not visible in the earlier IDF clip.
In the intervening hours, the IDF also posted online a photo of the weaponry purportedly found at Al-Shifa hospital. The WhatsApp file name for this photo indicates it was taken at 17:35; this places it after the IDF tour of the MRI compound but almost certainly before the Fox News crew arrived.
It is possible the weaponry was removed from the scene and replaced prior to the news crews arriving. However, this does not explain why more guns are visible when the press arrives than in the original IDF video.
The BBC was also granted access to the hospital the following day, on Thursday, and two AK-47 guns are still visible on top of the bag inside the MRI room.
The IDF told CNN the discrepancy between the military’s own video and the BBC footage was “due to the fact that more weaponry and terrorist assets were discovered throughout the day”.
“Suggestions that the IDF is manipulating the media are incorrect,” it added, adding, “We are acting with full transparency whilst maintaining the safety of our troops and operational readiness.”
On Wednesday, the Israeli army began a raid of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, with 700 patients and thousands of internally displaced people inside. Israel has claimed that members of the Palestinian group Hamas were using the hospital as a base, a claim denied by both Hamas and hospital officials.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s senior representative in Lebanon, debunked Israeli allegations by presenting damning footage during a presentation in Beirut on Thursday.
The footage showed that Israel had been funneling weapons that it had seized during its ongoing war against Gaza across various places into the Al-Shifa Hospital, before claiming that it had found them inside the facility.
Playing the footage, Hamdan showed that Israeli forces had been taking the weapons into the facility inside cardboard boxes bearing the label of food aid.
