A lot of evidence still needs to be collected, but analysts are already starting to piece together possible scenarios for how the deadly Israeli air strike on a Gaza aid convoy played out.
Based on images of the aftermath and geolocations of the wreckages, they say the attack bears the hallmarks of a precision strike — and more than one.
Israel claims the strike that killed seven people working for disaster relief organisation World Central Kitchen (WCK) on Monday was "unintentional" and followed a "misidentification".
"This happens in war," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
But WCK founder Jose Andres says the aid workers had been targeted "systematically, car by car".
The strike, which killed an Australian, a Palestinian, and citizens of the UK, Poland and a dual US-Canadian national, has triggered international condemnation.
World leaders, including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, are calling for accountability, saying there must be a "fast, immediate, clear and transparent" investigation.
Israeli says there will be an "independent" investigation into the incident, but it's unclear exactly how it will be conducted.
The ABC spoke to a group of international experts who analysed the images and offered their views on how it unfolded:
- Retired Lieutenant Charles Faint, chair for the Study of Special Operations at the The Modern War Institute at West Point. Dr Faint has 27 years' experience in the infantry and military Intelligence branches of the US Army, including time in special operations
- Nick Waters, an ex-British Army officer, and justice and accountability lead with the open-source intelligence group Bellingcat
- Raphael Cohen, director of strategy at US think tank Rand Corporation's Project Air Force
Signs of a precision strike
The WCK says when their seven members left the organisation's warehouse to deliver aid inside Gaza, they thought they would be travelling along a "deconflicted zone".
They had coordinated with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to ensure their convoy — two armoured cars emblazoned with the WCK logo and a third "soft skin" vehicle — wouldn't come under fire.
But not long into their journey, the cars were hit by an Israeli air strike.
Nick Waters says hitting a moving target is quite difficult, so you need a precision munition that can manoeuvre in the air with real-time updates.
"If you have three vehicles, over a kind of three-kilometre stretch, these are being targeted with precision — this isn't just a mistake."
"This is a case where these vehicles have been tracked, targeted and then destroyed.
"And it appears that they've been hit very, very precisely — impacted directly into the body.
"Everything about this indicates that these vehicles were struck deliberately."
Charles Faint agrees the damage shows the strikes appear to be deliberate.
"Those are precision munitions.
"It would be extremely unlikely that those were three separate accidents. So I think the vehicles were targeted."
Could there have been mistaken identity?
Raphael Cohen says although the images make it "fairly clear" it was a deliberate strike on each of the vehicles, it's not clear who the Israeli units intended to strike.
The chief of staff of Israel's Defence Force, Herzi Halevi, released a recorded message saying an "initial" investigation found the strike "was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers", adding the IDF was "sorry for the unintentional harm".
This "grave mistake", Mr Halevi said, followed a "misidentification — at night during a war in very complex conditions".
Mr Cohen says to analyse "what was known at the time" of the strike, we need to see images from the feed from the Israeli unit that carried out the bombing.
"That's the key imagery that you want to see.
"These photos (the ones currently available) look like they are taken maybe 20-feet (six metes) away, on the ground, in daylight.
"They look very different from what is seen 20,000 feet in the air, at night."
Mr Waters isn't as certain.
"It's slightly possible that the logo or writing didn't show up. That's something I cannot completely dismiss without knowing precisely what optic was used.
"But the logo was certainly well presented. I think it's likely it was visible, so it was pretty clear what the vehicles were and what they were doing.
"So there are really considerable questions overall — why the strike was authorised, why it took place and why the strike continued to occur?"
[map 2]Bellingcat geolocated the positions of the wreckages approximately 12 kilometres away from the newly built pier that was set up by WCK specifically to deliver aid.
It located them on the outskirts of Dier al-Balah, where the WCK facilities are based.
"The convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route," the WCK said.
The convoy had been travelling on a route earmarked as an "accessible road for humanitarian aid" by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in late March.
Mr Waters says given the convoy was on that road, it's hard to consider it was an accident.
"It happened on a road that was highlighted as being used for aid deliveries in three large white vehicles, with logos on the roof, which had been deconflicted with the IDF.
"I very much struggle to understand how this could have been a mistake. But it depends on what they mean by a mistake.
"Do they mean mistake as in a unit went rogue and ignored their orders? Or do they mean a mistake is something else? The lack of specificity in the IDF statement itself leaves a lot of questions to be answered."
Mr Cohen argues there may have been a breakdown in communication between who was coordinating with the aid workers and feeding information to the Israeli units.
"When humanitarian aid convoys are coordinated with any military there's usually a specific organisation that does that sort of deconfliction with the humanitarian organisations.
"So the question is, was that information passed on to the tactical units on the ground? Was this tragedy due to a breakdown in communication?
"Or did that tactical unit know that it was indeed an aid convoy, or did they think that aid convoy was something else? That's what we don't know."
Dr Faith says even though the cars were clearly marked, it doesn't mean they weren't perceived as "legitimate targets", but they could have "hit people that they did not intend to hit".
He added that there's no suspicion the aid workers were doing anything wrong.
"They were just people that were trying to help people, and unfortunately in the fog of war they got killed."
What do we know about the weapons used?
Mr Waters says although you can't be certain without seeing fragments of the munition itself, the vehicles bear the hallmarks of a precision strike by low-yield missiles.
"The actual impact in the vehicles appear to be from a relatively low-yield munition.
"Typically these aren't 500-pound bombs, they are smaller munitions. Because they're smaller, they need to be more precise.
"These are very precise munitions that impacted into the vehicles with an extremely high level of precision."
Dr Faith agrees the weapon was smaller and used to specifically target those vehicles and to avoid any surrounding collateral damage.
"The cratering and the penetration on top of some of the vehicles looks like it looks like they were hit by a warhead that did not contain the typical high explosive that we would expect to see in a standard missile.
"It seems pretty obvious to me that they're trying to minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage.
"That's why you hit with one of those types of weapons instead of a more traditional hellfire."
What next?
US President Joe Biden said the Israeli investigation "must be swift".
"It must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public," he said, adding that not enough was being done to protect aid workers or civilians in Gaza.
At least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the United Nations.
Mr Cohen says these types of incidents are common in war, but there are specific questions that need to be answered.
"Unfortunately, there's a history of these type of mistakes happening.
"Now the question that I think this investigation needs to come to is, if there's something that the Israelis did that was unique or different or more aggressive, or that made this kind of incident more likely."
He added that it will take time for a methodical investigation.
"You need to see the strike footage, you need to find not just that World Central Kitchen coordinated with the Israelis, but who did they coordinate with to pass on that information? Did that information get all the way around?
"We need to find get to in order to assign culpability, but more importantly to in order to prevent this from ever happening again, which is obviously the goal."
