The BBC has accepted one of its live air correspondents wrongly speculated that an Israeli airstrike might have been responsible for the rocket attack at a Gaza hospital that initial reports claimed killed 500 people, as Israel denied involvement.

“We accept that even in this fast-moving situation it was wrong to speculate in this way, although he did not at any point report that it was an Israeli strike,” the corporation wrote on its “Corrections and Clarifications” page amid the Israel-Gaza conflict.

BBC correspondent Jon Donnison during early live reporting from Israel over what was reported to be a deadly explosion speculated that country’s forces were to blame, as he told BBC News: “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.” 

Israel and the Palestinians went on to trade blame for the blast — Hamas claimed it was a deliberate Israeli airstrike; Israel said that a Palestinian rocket, launched by the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, exploded in mid-air and fell on the hospital grounds.

The U.S. has since confirmed, via an independent assessment, that a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and hit al-Ahli Hospital.

The Oct. 17 explosion and carnage at the hospital in Gaza City came just before U.S. President Joe Biden was about to fly to Israel for a diplomatic mission. Shortly after arriving in Tel Aviv, Biden told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the strike against the hospital “was done by the other team, not by you,” citing “the data I was shown by my defense department.”

The BBC said that after reviewing Donnison’s “instant analysis on the ground from Jerusalem in what was a confusing and difficult story,” the BBC News program repeatedly said it had yet to verify who was behind the blast and that the Israel military had been contacted and was investigating.

”This doesn’t represent the entirety of the BBC’s output and anyone watching, listening to or reading our coverage can see we have set out both sides’ competing claims about the explosion, clearly showing who is saying them, and what we do or don’t know,” the BBC added about claims and counter-claims that emerged in the immediate aftermath.

The BBC was not the only major news outlet to misreport the hospital rocket attack. On the night of the explosion, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry put the death toll at 500 or more dead, which was subsequently reported by many U.S. outlets. According to the N.Y. Times, American intelligence agencies have since assessed the death toll to be between 100 and 300 people, with the total likely closer to the lower estimate.

Based on additional reporting, including intelligence, missile activity and open-source video and images, Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Wednesday that the U.S. government “assesses that Israel was not responsible” for the attack.