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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: ISPT166 )
On May 2, 2023, two missiles, allegedly either from the Israeli Iron Dome system or Palestinian misfired rockets, were reported to have fallen on or near the house of the Al-Masri family in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza strip, injuring five civilian members of the family including a child: Mamdouh Muhammad Fadl al-Masri.
Multiple outlets reported on the evening of Tuesday May 2, 2023 that five members of the Al-Masri family had been admitted to Beit Hanoun Hospital for injuries ranging in severity from “moderate” to “minor,” that resulted from falling Iron Dome shrapnel. One was identified as Mamdouh Muhammad Fadl al-Masri, who sustained an injury to his left foot. No known source has provided identifying information about the four other members of the Al-Masri family who were injured in this incident. One tweet by @AvichayAdraee used the ambiguous wording “[…] two rockets fell in the center of the town of #Beit_Hanoun, injuring five civilians, members of the al-Masry family, including children!” suggesting more than one of the injured members of the Al-Masri family may have been a child, but other sources mentioned only one child among the injured and identified him as Mamdouh.
The same day multiple sources documented the damage to the house caused by the rockets. Footage posted to Twitter by @eiderkamp showed damage to the exterior walls of the house, broken windows in a first story sleeping room, and a square hole approximately 0.5m in width through the wall of a second story sleeping room, with debris and shards of glass thrown over beds, mattresses, and clothes. Multiple social media accounts posted a photo of a twisted fragment of one rocket’s body with exposed ragged edges lying on a debris-strewn floor inside the house. On May 3, 2023, @Sa7atPlBreaking posted a photo showing the smoking tail section of another rocket lying in a crater where it had severed part of a drip irrigation system.
Also on May 2, 2023, Al-Nadah News quoted an Israeli army spokesman as confirming the incident and civilian harm: “The missiles that were fired towards Sderot, two of them landed in the center of the town of Beit Hanoun, wounding five civilians.” A tweet from @AvichayAdraee, the IDF Spokesperson for Arab Media, also stated that “during the launch of a salvo of rockets by the #Islamic_Jihad terrorist organization towards the Sderot area, two rockets fell,” attributing the rockets to Palestinian forces. However, local sources identified Israeli forces as responsible for the attack.
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Beit Hanoun (ابيت حانون), for which the generic coordinates are: 31.538477, 34.536837. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.