TOKYO, October 18. /TASS/. Palestinian Ambassador to Japan Waleed Siam said at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday that he was withdrawing his earlier statement to the effect that Israeli forces had purportedly warned the Gaza City hospital hit by a missile strike on Tuesday an hour before the attack.

"I revoke my previous statement," the diplomat said. Siam told reporters earlier that Israel had issued a warning to the hospital by making a phone call to the medical facility an hour before the bombing. When taking clarifying questions from reporters, however, he said that calls to the hospital in question had been made regularly on previous days, but not on the specific night of the missile attack.

The death toll from the explosion at the hospital has already reached almost 500 and "will likely rise," the Palestinian ambassador said.

Arab media outlets reported on October 17 that Israeli airstrikes on the central part of Gaza City had hit a hospital. The attack killed over 500 people and left hundreds of others wounded, according to the Palestinian radical group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied responsibility, saying in a statement that the powerful explosion in the Gaza City hospital had resulted from a misfired rocket launched from within the Palestinian enclave. The IDF blamed the Islamic Jihad group for the rocket strike on the hospital.