Biden backs Israel over hospital carnage as he meets Netanyahu

JOE BIDEN landed in Israel today and pointed the finger of blame for the Gaza hospital slaughter on terrorists in the strip as he tries to stop the conflict spiralling into a regional war.

- Nicholas Cecil, Rachael Burford

Shortly after arriving in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president stressed he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the explosion at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza which is feared to have killed hundreds of people.

“Based on what I have seen, it appears though it was done by the other team, not you,” a frail-looking Mr Biden, 80, told Mr Netanyahu at a joint press conference.

“But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure, so we have got to overcome a lot of things,” he added, with tensions in the region at boiling point after the hospital horror.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli air strike caused the destruction. But the Israel Defence Forces denied involvement and blamed a misfired rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The IDF investigation, made public this morning, included radar reportedly showing 10 rockets fired from a nearby cemetery. The Islamic Jihad group denied responsibility.

Protests erupted in cities across the Middle East and Arab world over the devastating hospital explosion, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Iraq and Libya.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the destruction of the Al Ahli hospital as “the latest example of Israeli attacks devoid of the most basic human values”.

With Israel being blamed in some media yesterday, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly stressed today: “Last night, too many jumped to conclusions around the tragic loss of life at Al Ahli hospital. Getting this wrong would put even more lives at risk.”