WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense experts who reviewed images of the wreckage Israeli airstrikes spark deadly fire at camp Palestinian refugees questioned why Israel did not use smaller, more precise weapons when there were so many civilians nearby, and they said the bombs used were likely American-made.
An attack targeting Hamas operatives killed 45 people sheltering in a temporary camp near the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Sunday. international condemnation.
Israel is investigating the attack but says the Hamas target was 1.7 kilometers (one mile) away from a declared humanitarian area and that a pre-attack assessment determined no civilian casualties were expected.
But the refugees were scattered throughout the area and no evacuation orders were issued by Israel, so civilians in the burning tents believed they were safe, even though the area was not designated a humanitarian zone.
Israel Hamas attacks The UN Security Council in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023 did not clarify where the burned tents were located in relation to the facilities it bombed on Sunday, but released one satellite image that showed several civilian shelters about 180 meters (600 feet) away. The UN Security Council stressed that while there were no tents in the “immediate vicinity,” the fire started due to an “unforeseen incident,” resulting in tragic loss of life for nearby Gaza civilians.
Footage released by the Israeli military appears to show people walking next to the targeted building before the explosion, and also appears to show tents pitched nearby.
Israel has not specified which bomb it used, but IDF spokesman Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari stressed that the country chose the smallest bombs it could carry on a jet – 17 kilograms (37 pounds) per bomb – and that an unintentional secondary explosion could have caused the fire.
Defense experts said the way jet-launched bombs explode sends shrapnel flying far away, so even the smallest bombs could be too large for nearby civilians.
Images posted to social media from the tent camp on Monday and reviewed by The Associated Press showed CAGE codes, unique identifiers assigned to U.S. government suppliers, on pieces of exploded weapons.
Two defense experts said that based on those images and satellite photos of the wreckage, the bomb used was likely a U.S.-made 250-pound (113-kilogram) GBU-39 small diameter bomb.
These bombs are smaller than many of the other weapons the US has provided to Israel, but still have the potential to cause widespread damage: The entire 250-pound projectile and components are designed to scatter shrapnel that can travel as far as 2,000 feet (600 meters).
“They’re essentially using two bombs, and the shrapnel can travel up to 600 metres in a congested area, so it’s really unproven that they’re trying to reduce casualties,” said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance demolition engineer.
Ball said serial numbers on pieces of tail kit and shell remnants in photos identify the bomb as a 250-pound GBU-39. Ball and Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it’s unusual to describe a bomb by the weight of the explosives (37 pounds in this case) rather than its total weight.
The wreckage in Gaza suggests the bomb may have been set to explode before impact, which would have guaranteed a target kill but risked unintended deaths, Ball and Cancian said. The images showed small holes where shrapnel was found.
The GBU-39’s fuze settings can be adjusted so that the bomb explodes on impact, creating an immediate crater, or it can be set for a delayed detonation if the goal is to penetrate deeper into the target.
They can also be set to explode in the air just before impact to ensure they hit multiple targets, but that also maximizes area damage, so secondary explosions can occur even if weapons or other flammable objects are some distance away, Ball said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Wednesday: Visit to Moldova The United States is awaiting an investigation to determine what weapons were used and how they were deployed.
Even if Israel is confirmed to have used small-caliber weapons, it was “limited, concentrated, Targeted attacks “Even though these operations are designed to counter terrorists who are killing innocent civilians and plotting to kill more, such operations have the potential to have horrific, horrific, unintended consequences,” Blinken said.
Defense experts said Israel has more reliable options than the GBU-39 when civilians are nearby.
Cancian said Israel has previously deployed drones to fire smaller, more precise weapons, but those strikes have been used for years and have done little damage beyond direct targets.
For example, if Israel had targeted specific Hamas leaders in the attack, it could have used smaller anti-personnel weapons known as mini-spikes, which would not have spread shrapnel over such a wide area, Cancian said.
The United States They withheld the shipment of a larger 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bomb. After Israel bombed other parts of Gaza, it withdrew from Israel out of fear that it would be used for Operation Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians gathered. The same number of people have now fled Rafah and are scattered across the country. Temporary tent camp Other regions.
Cancian said Sunday’s attack shows that even the smaller 250-pound bombs the U.S. continues to provide may be too large to use near areas crowded with refugees.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that the US was still seeking intelligence from Israel about the deadly Rafah attack. He declined to say what specific weapons Israel used but said Israel’s public comments about the weapons used “certainly indicate a desire to be more careful and precise in targeting.”
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Federman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Prague, Ellen Knickmeyer and Zeke Miller in Washington and Kareem Shehaieb in Beirut, Lebanon contributed.
