Canada reluctant to lay blame for Gaza hospital strike

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) – Canada is not prepared to name who is responsible for the strike on a hospital in Gaza this week that killed and maimed hundreds of Palestinians, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday.

Unlike the US, where President Joe Biden said “the other team” – meaning a Palestinian organization – carried out the deadly strike, Trudeau said that all the evidence was not yet known.

“We are working closely with allies to determine exactly what happened,” he said during a press conference in Ottawa with Caribbean leaders who are attending a summit there.

Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas are trading blame for the Oct. 17 blast that, depending on who is doing the counting, killed between 300-500 people.

“We saw some preliminary evidence, but we'll keep working with our allies as quickly as possible before reaching any firm and final conclusion,” Trudeau said.

Because many Canadian communities lost friends and family in the blast – the Palestinian Cultural Association said this week that residents of Edmonton in the province of Alberta had lost dozens of family in the debacle – Trudeau said he wanted to be as sure as possible who did it before naming names.

Many in Canada are “personally affected in an intensive way by what happened over there,” he said, therefore Canada is “taking the necessary time to look very carefully at everything.”

Hamas says the devastation came about because of an Israeli airstrike, while Israel blames a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group.

Canada is not alone in its reluctance to name anyone for the strike just yet. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday that he is not about to “rush to judgment,” and like Canada, Britain is working with allies to “get to the bottom of the situation.”