Small American bomb kills dozens of Palestinians in Gaza

Lara Jakes

UNITED STATES: A US-made precision-guided bomb, which targets specific targets and, ideally, limits civilian casualties, was used in airstrikes in Gaza that killed dozens of Palestinians, including women and children.

The weapon, the GBU-39, or small diameter bomb, was used in an attack on a former United Nations school on Thursday and in a May 26 strike in Rafah. In both cases, the Israeli military defended its actions, saying the strikes targeted militants using civilians as human shields. Gaza health authorities said civilians were also killed and videos and photos of women and children were among the dead.

Two weapons experts told the New York Times that Israel appears to have increased its use of bombs since the start of this year, compared to the early days of the war, when it dropped them in just 10 percent of strikes. air strikes against Gaza. As a recent series of Israeli strikes demonstrates, even a relatively small bomb can cause serious civilian casualties.

“The fact is that even by using a smaller weapon, or by using a precision-guided weapon, that doesn't mean you're not killing civilians, and it doesn't mean that all of your strikes are suddenly lawful,” he said. said Brian Castner, an American researcher. arms expert at Amnesty International.

Early in the war, the Israeli military launched large-scale invasions of Gaza towns with tanks, artillery and 2,000-pound bombs, earning international condemnation for heavy civilian casualties. .

Under the leadership of the Biden administration, analysts say, Israel has shifted its combat strategy toward low-intensity operations and targeted raids, and is now relying more on the GBU-39. The bomb weighs 250 pounds, including 37 pounds of explosives, and is fired from warplanes.

Ryan Brobst, a military analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said this change appears to have started in January or February and “probably explains the change in munitions used.”

Last month, an unexploded GBU-39 was discovered at a school in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, and the distinctive tail fin of the same type of bomb was found at the scene of an Israeli strike. May 13, further south, against a family home and school in Nuseirat which killed up to 30 people.

And remnants of GBU-39s appeared outside residential homes that were hit by deadly Israeli airstrikes in Rafah in April, in an unidentified location in Gaza in March and in Tal-Al Sultan in January , analysts said.

These examples of Israel's use of GBU-39s represent only a fraction of what experts estimate, in total, to be at least tens of thousands of airstrikes with various weapons. But wreckage discovered following the airstrikes and demands to replenish Israeli stockpiles indicate that Israel has clearly stepped up its use of GBU-39s, several analysts said.

“We've seen a lot more GBU-39 waste over the last few months,” Mr. Castner said. “The trend is from bigger to smaller. (However, he added, Amnesty investigators continue to see evidence of large munitions like the Mark-80 series, which weigh up to 2,000 pounds and were launched in densely populated areas at the start of the war.)

Only the Israeli military has a precise list of how often and where it has used GBU-39s since the war began in October, after Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages, according to Israel. Israeli military officials did not respond to questions about the weapon in Gaza, but said in a written statement to the New York Times on Thursday that “when the type of target and operational circumstances permit, the Israeli military prefers to use lighter ammunition.

The statement went on to say: “The munitions chosen by the IDF are chosen to match the type of munition to the specific target, with the intention of achieving the military objective while taking into account the environment and mitigating the damage caused to the environment. civilian population as much as possible. During the first six weeks of the war, Israel regularly dropped 2,000-pound bombs in southern Gaza, where civilians had been asked to move for their safety. The strikes reduced apartment buildings to huge craters and killed thousands, a Times investigation concluded in December.

In November, U.S. officials urged Israel to use smaller bombs to better protect civilians. Just a month earlier, GBU-39 maker Boeing Corp. accelerated delivery of 1,000 weapons from a 2021 order that had not yet been finalized.

In December, President Biden warned Israel that it was losing global support in the war because of the “indiscriminate bombing that is taking place.”

“We have made it clear to the Israelis, and they are aware, that the safety of innocent Palestinians remains a great concern,” Mr. Biden said on December 12. “And so the actions they take need to be consistent.” trying to do everything in our power to prevent innocent Palestinian civilians from being injured, murdered, killed or lost. »

But even the smallest bombs caused collateral damage.

The first known use of GBU-39 in the current war took place on October 24 in Khan Younis, where two family homes were hit by four of these bombs, an expert said.

In January, shortly before 11 p.m., Israel struck the top two floors of a five-story residential building in Rafah. It killed 18 civilians, including four women and 10 children, according to an Amnesty International investigation which concluded that the bomb used in the attack was a GBU-39. This is among examples compiled in April by Amnesty International of potentially illegal use of US-made weapons in Israel, dating back to January 2023.

The State Department concluded in May that Israel most likely violated humanitarian standards by failing to protect civilians in Gaza, but said it found no specific cases justifying withholding U.S. military aid .

Current and former U.S. officials have said that Israel generally does not share information about its use of GBU-39s with Washington, and that a State Department system created in August to track civilian deaths caused by American-made weapons in foreign conflicts have struggled to compile a comprehensive list. A U.S. official said the May 26 airstrike in Rafah was being investigated as part of the new process to determine whether humanitarian laws were violated by the use of U.S. weapons.

Israel has deployed GBU-39s since 2008, using them in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. The bombs have a range of at least 40 miles and are GPS-guided with coordinates of specific targets set before the weapons are launched. Experts say the GBU-39 is so precise that it can hit specific parts of buildings.

The United States has delivered at least 9,550 GBU-39s to Israel since 2012, including the 1,000 shipped last fall as part of an expedited order, according to data from the International Peace Research Institute. Stockholm, which tracks arms transfers. Mr. Brobst, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said more had probably been shipped since.

Most attack aircraft can carry eight GBU-39s at a time, and each can be guided independently to various targets. This makes it an effective weapon for the Israeli military, said NR Jenzen-Jones, director of Armaments Research Services.

However, in terms of limiting civilian casualties, “it is not a panacea,” Mr. Jenzen-Jones said. “It may be small compared to other aerial bombs, but the small diameter bomb still has a big impact.” Rome-based Lara Jakes reports on the West's diplomatic and military efforts to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. She has been a journalist for almost 30 years