An investigation by Al Jazeera has uncovered that Israel has killed at least 2,843 Palestinians in their onslaught on Gaza using thermobaric weapons, which are internationally banned, including by the US and Western European allies to Israel.
These weapons reach 3,500C, so they melt human bodies immediately on impact. These weapons, usually vacuum or aerosol bombs, are internationally banned – but evidence indicates Israel has been using them on the civilian population of Gaza.
In August 2024, Yasmin Mahani, a Palestinian mother, rushed to the site of an Israeli attack on al-Tabin school in Gaza City. She was looking for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming but no sign of Saad. Speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic, she said:
“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood. We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”
Her son was likely evaporated by an Israeli thermobaric bomb.
According to research from Al Jazeera Arabic, “The Rest of the Story”, teams from the Palestinian Civil Defense have counted 2,842 Palestinians who have simply “disappeared” since October 2023 without leaving anything behind apart from small blood splashes or small bits of flesh. Experts and witnesses have said this corroborates with Israel’s use of thermal and thermobaric weapons.
This research is highly reliable as the Palestinian Civil Defense have conducted stringent research in Gaza – using a “method of elimination” at strike sites according to spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal, talking to Al Jazeera.
“We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered. If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces – blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,”, he continued.
The investigation shows how Israeli weapons use a certain chemical compositions to vaporize Palestinians. Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, highlights that thermobaric weapons do not just explode like conventional explosives – but create a cloud of fuel that then ignites, reaching 2500-3500C and vaporizing the strike site.
Source: Al Jazeera
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, speaking to Al Jazeera, explains that human biology dictates that such weapons first boils the roughly 80% water content of the human body, then the tissues are vaporized into ash.
The investigation also identified many of these weapons to have been manufactured in the United States.
- MK-84 ‘Hammer’ – 900kg unguided weapon that reaches 3,500C
- BLU-109 bunker buster – Used in al-Mawasi massacre in September 2024, an attack on an area designated by the IDF as a safe-zone. It evaporated 22 people. It has a delayed fuse allowing it to bury itself before detonating the fireball, allowing it to vaporize enclosed spaces.
- GBU-39 – Precision glide bomb used in al-Tabin school attack. Designed to keep building structure while destroying everything inside with a pressure wave rupturing lungs and thermal wave incinerating soft tissue, as explained by Fatigarov.
Basal, the Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson, also confirmed to Al Jazeera the presence of GBU-39 wings at sites where bodies vanished.
Source: Al Jazeera
Legal experts say that these kind of indiscriminate weapons that do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants constitute a violation of international law and a war crime. Speaking to the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, lawyer Diana Buttu, at Georgetown University in Qatar, iterated that the supply chain of these prohibited weapons to Israel from the United States and Europe may also implicate them in international law violations.
This investigation comes after over two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which has killed over 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, around 350 of those deaths happening after the 10 October ceasefire agreement. This also comes after the International Criminal Court found Palestinians have a plausible right to protection from genocide in January 2024, on top of ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as senior Hamas military commander, Mohammed Deif (now deceased).
