A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City.
Adel Hana/Associated Press
Israel’s use of US-made bombs is contributing to high Palestinian civilian casualties, experts say.The rate of death in Gaza has outpaced some of the century’s “deadliest moments,” The New York Times reported.One expert said Israel’s use of aerial bombs is “beyond anything that I’ve seen.”
Israel’s use of large, American-made bombs is contributing to the massive death toll in Gaza, passing some of the deadliest conflicts in recent memory.
The killing in Gaza, aided by the use of 2,000-pound US-made bombs, is outpacing many of this century’s “deadliest moments,” including the United States campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, according to The New York Times.
The massive scale of Israel’s attacks along with the use of large, US-made bombs in dense, urban areas have contributed to the massive death toll, according to the report.
While it’s not entirely possible to calculate the exact number of civilian casualties in Gaza, researchers believe the 10,000 women and children reported dead by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry to be an approximate, if conservative, estimate of civilian killings, according to the report.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s most recent death toll released on November 10 included 11,078 deaths, according to the Associated Press.
Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for Dutch peace organization PAX and former senior Pentagon intelligence analyst, told The Times that the use of such bombs by Israel is “beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career.”
The closest instances Garlasco could point to for a historical comparison, when such large bombs were dropped on such densely populated areas, were “Vietnam, or the Second World War,” according to the outlet.
According to the report, US military officials often believed that the most common American-made aerial bomb, which weighs 500 pounds, was too large to be used when fighting the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. In contrast, Israel has been liberally using 2,000-pound bombs, which are also made in America, and are capable of crumbling entire apartment complexes, The Times reported.
Brian Castner, an Amnesty International weapons investigator and former US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal officer, told The Times that the bombs used in Gaza are larger than bombs used by the US to fight ISIS in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Castner told the outlet that the explosives are more consistent with targeting underground structures such as tunnels.
“They are using extremely large weapons in extremely densely populated areas,” Castner said. “It is the worst possible combination of factors.”
Israel has noted that Gaza is a unique battlefield — small and dense with civilians living next to and on top of Hamas-run tunnel networks, The Times reported.
Israel acknowledges that women and children have been killed in Gaza, but said the reported death toll in the Hamas-run region can not be trusted, according to The Times. Israel’s military did not provide a casualty count of its own, but denied targeting civilians, the newspaper said.
“We do a lot in order to prevent and, where possible, minimize the killing or wounding of civilians,” Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, told the outlet. “We focus on Hamas.”
On Friday, Israel agreed to a four day cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages held by Hamas inside Gaza. Hamas released 25 total hostages, 13 Israelis and 11 foreigners, including 10 from Thailand and one from the Philippines, on the same day.
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.