LONDON — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned there should be no “rush to judgment” over who was behind the explosion at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital.
Speaking in the House of Commons at weekly prime minister’s questions, Sunak refused to attribute blame for the Tuesday night blast, telling MPs: “We should not rush to judgment before we have all the facts on this awful situation.”
He met the National Security Adviser, and the chair of the cross-governmental Joint Intelligence Committee, on Wednesday morning, he told MPs.
It comes after U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the attack, which killed hundreds on Tuesday night, appears to have been committed by the “other team, not you.” Biden landed in Israel on Wednesday.
Hamas, however, said the explosion was a result of an Israeli airstrike, whilst the IDF has blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants.
Speaking on Wednesday afternoon, Sunak described the blast as “devastating,” saying that “every member will know that the words we say here has an impact beyond this house.”
He later added that the U.K. was working with allies to establish the truth “robustly and independently” adding: “We don’t treat what comes out of the Kremlin as the gospel truth, we should not do the same with Hamas.”
Speaking in the House of Commons later, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly warned “pointing fingers prematurely only fuels regional instability and upsets community cohesion here in the UK.”
“We need a firm grasp of what has happened, not a slew of social media commentary,” he added.
