Israel dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs — the second largest type in its arsenal — on the site of the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, according to the New York Times.
The regime forces carried out air attacks on the heavily populated camp in northern Gaza on Tuesday, killing hundreds of Palestinians, mostly women and children.
According to the analysis conducted by the Times of satellite images, photos, and videos, the bomb used in the regime’s attacks on the site is generally the largest that most militaries use on a regular basis. Such bombs, the newspaper wrote, can be used to target underground infrastructure.
“Two impact craters are about 40 feet wide — dimensions consistent with underground explosions that this type of weapon would produce in light, sandy soil,” the Times wrote, citing a 2016 technical study by Armament Research Services.
The bombs might have had “a delay fuse,” said Marc Garlasco, one of the study’s authors.
The fuse, he said, delays detonation until milliseconds after penetration of the surface or a building so that the explosion’s destructive power reaches more deeply.
Eighty-three countries, including the United States but not Israel, have signed a commitment to refrain “as appropriate, from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas” because of their likelihood of harming civilians.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch said that the regime’s “continual bombardment of Gaza, including this Jabalia strike, magnifies this concern many times over.”
The Israeli military released footage on social media, claiming that it showed the killing of the head of Hamas’s Anti-Tank Missile Unit on Wednesday.
But the Times determined that the video in fact captured the strike on Jabalia on Tuesday, which Israel claimed killed a different commander.
Israeli warplanes have been pounding the Gaza Strip since the occupying regime was caught off-guard by Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by the resistance movement Hamas on October 7.
Tel Aviv claims its airstrikes target Hamas commanders and the resistance group’s infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to a new analysis of satellite data, the regime’s air attacks have so far destroyed or damaged at least a quarter of buildings in the northern part of the Palestinian territory.
The regime’s genocidal air attacks have so far killed virtually 9,500 people, including over 3,826 children and 2,405 women.
