U.S.-made bomb used in Israeli strike on Rafah that killed dozens, munitions experts say
Analysis of images of shrapnel gathered at the scene of an Israeli strike in Rafah on Sunday showed evidence of a bomb that was a U.S.-made GBU-39, two munitions experts told CBS News. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the strike and subsequent fires.
“I instantly knew the housing was a GBU,” Trevor Ball, who worked as an ordnance disposal tech – or bomb diffuser – for the U.S. Army for five years, told CBS News. “I’ve seen a lot of them in this conflict, and I’ve even gone back and looked at past conflicts just to get an idea of what ordinance Israel has used in the past when I started looking into this, and it’s a very distinct object, the GBU. It’s a very unique round.”
Photos and videos used to identify the bomb remnants were taken by journalist Alam Sadeq in Gaza, who visited the scene of the strike early on Monday.
Alam Sadeq
He told CBS News he was searching the area, including around damaged tents that had once housed civilians, when he identified several pieces of shrapnel with English words on them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there had been a “tragic mishap” and that Israel was investigating. He did not elaborate.
Weir said the bomb was “a very small weapon as far as air dropped munitions,” but that it still carries “severe risk,” especially when used near populated areas. He told CBS News that it wasn’t the smallest weapon that could have been used to carry out a precision strike.
“Israel has plenty of other munitions, in fact, that it has used in the past, in the fighting in Gaza and elsewhere,” Weir said. “So it has other options available. It’s just simply not the case that this was the only weapon that they could use to strike a target in, or near, a densely populated, internally displaced persons camp.”
“I don’t know enough about the aircraft integration, but it’s not the smallest munition they have for precision strikes,” Ball, the former bomb diffuser, said. “They commonly use drone-employed weapons that have a much smaller effective area.”
Both Weir and Ball also said that a bomb of any size could potentially start a fire.
“Explosives release a lot of heat when they explode, and they can often cause fires,” Ball said. “Technically, if you drop one in the desert and there’s no fuel around, yeah, it can’t cause a fire on its own, because there’s no fuel to burn. But you’re dropping it in an area where there’s a lot of other flammable materials, from people living and being in camps… it could easily have caused a fire.”
Olivia Gazis contributed to this report.
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Source: cbsnews.com