US bomb fragments discovered at site of Israeli strike on Rafah camp

Israel said the attack was a “targeted” strike against two Hamas militants, carried out using “the smallest munition” that Israeli warplanes can use. The fire that broke out at the camp was “unexpected and unintentional” and she was investigating whether secondary explosions sparked the fire.

The results do not contradict Israel's claim that it used a small munition, weapons experts said. Israel said it used munitions containing “17 kilos of explosive material,” a weight corresponding to the size of a warhead used with a GBU-39, according to Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. American.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the United States could not confirm what weapons were used or how they were used in the strike. Speaking to reporters, Blinken called the attack “horrific” and said anyone who saw footage of it was affected on a “basic human level.”

The United States has been “very clear with Israel,” Blinken said, about the need to “immediately investigate and question exactly what happened.” Asked whether the strike would affect U.S. military assistance to Israel, he said Washington would “wait for the results” of the Israeli investigation.

“Munitions like the GBU-39 are often selected specifically to minimize the risk of harm to civilians or civilian objects,” said NR Jenzen-Jones, director of Armaments Research Services. Regardless, he said, “for any targeted strike – and particularly for any strike carried out in close proximity to civilians – a robust collateral damage estimation procedure is necessary.”

More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza's health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of victims are women and children. Israel launched its campaign after Hamas militants stormed Israeli communities near the border and killed around 1,200 people in October.

Images of the fragments, taken Monday by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, showed the cage code, or a five-character sequence used to identify arms sellers to the U.S. government. The designation “81873” links the fragment to Woodward HRT, a weapons component manufacturer registered in Valencia, California.

The video and images of Sadeq were verified and geotagged by The Post. He traveled to Rafah from nearby Khan Younis early Monday to document the aftermath of the strike. As he walked through the rubble, he noticed a boy sitting on the ground examining the remains of an electronic card.

“He told me this coin was in his tent,” Sadeq said. “I knew this missile was used for bombing.”

The United States provided Israel with 1,000 precision-guided bombs in 2023, according to an arms transfer database maintained by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The Biden administration did not halt transfers of these munitions during the war. Last month, the State Department approved the transfer of more than 1,000 GBU-39/B small-diameter bombs with containers on the same day that Israeli forces bombed a convoy of aid workers from World Central Kitchen in Gaza , killing seven people.

The attack struck Sunday evening near a logistics base of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, destroying at least four sheet metal structures used as shelters for displaced people, according to satellite images from Monday provided by Planet Labs. More than a dozen tent-like structures were also visible between the tin buildings and the U.N. warehouse, a distance of about 500 feet, in images before and after the strike.

Over the past eight months, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge in Rafah as the Israeli offensive hit the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The city swelled with displaced people, who set up tent camps in the streets, on vacant lots and on sand dunes near the sea.

It is unclear how many people were still in the camp on Sunday when the strike broke out. After Israel seized the Rafah border crossing earlier this month, nearly a million people fled the city, fearing a wider incursion.

Wes J. Bryant, a former U.S. Army targeting professional, said that “small diameter bombs are great for mitigating collateral damage when you don't drop them near family tents.”

The Israeli military stressed that the strike took place outside a designated “humanitarian zone”, but the Israel Defense Forces had not issued an evacuation order for that specific block of the Tal al-neighborhood. Sultan before the strike.

“There was a civilian encampment and the civilians there need to remain protected,” Bryant said, adding that the U.S. military would have required high command approval to attack the camp.

“Our collateral damage analysis probably would have placed the civilians within the radius of effect of the strike anyway, and so we probably would not have struck there,” he said.

An Israeli military spokesperson reached Wednesday said he could not comment further on the munitions used or measures taken to prevent civilian casualties.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Wednesday that the United States “does not have further details” about the causes of the explosion and subsequent fire.

Speaking to reporters during a virtual press briefing, Kirby said that if it were true that Israel was using precision-guided weapons, “that would certainly indicate a desire to be more deliberate and more precise in its targeting”.

Sadeq said he witnessed horrific scenes following the attack, including charred corpses, blood-splattered bread and a man searching for his cousin's head. He held a girl's brain in one hand and a bag full of body parts in the other.

The smell of death was “everywhere,” he said.

Brown and Kelly reported from Washington, Fahim from Istanbul, and Hudson from Chisinau, Moldova. Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report.