 On 28 August Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that "after closer study of the images of the damage to the ambulance, it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax," a conclusion he later said he drew from initial reports.On 30 August, the ICRC "rebuked" Foreign Minister Alexander Downer "for relying on an unverified internet blog" and said that "there was no evidence to support" the hoax claim.Andrew Bolt, a conservative Australian columnist who had written a column arguing that media photographs contradicted the ICRC's claims and that reporters were "passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists",
defended Downer,
and noted that later reports claiming that the ambulances were hit by small arms fire contradicted the original reports.