[News] Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that 'turn victims to ash'

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that 'turn victims to ash'

Israel has indiscriminately used US-supplied white phosphorus shells in
their attacks on Gaza and Lebanon

News Desk <https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9>

MAY 1, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/rights-group-urges-probe-into-israeli-arms-that-turn-victims-to-ash
(Photo Credit: Zuma Press)

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med)
released a report <https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6290> on 30 April
urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal
weapons.

“An international committee of experts must be established to look into the
weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip …
including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that
victims’ bodies evaporate,” the Euro-Med report said.

The rights group cites testimonies received from Gaza which revealed a
“horrific new level of killing in the Strip.” The bodies of Palestinian
victims appear to have been vaporized by the weapons Israel used against
residential buildings.

“Thousands of victims remain missing, either because it was impossible to
recover them from under the debris in light of insufficient equipment and
technical know-how, or because their bodies were either hidden by the
Israeli army or no longer exist,” the Euro-Med report reads.

The report continues to say, “A number of the victims killed in these
horrifying Israeli raids on residential buildings have vanished and may
have turned to ashes, raising questions about the type of bombs used in the
attacks.”

Thermobaric weapons, also referred to as vacuum bombs, are two-stage
munitions. The first charge disperses a fine aerosol cloud of materials
ranging from carbon-based fuel to metal particles. The second charge
ignites the materials used, creating a fireball, shock wave, and vacuum as
it sucks up the surrounding oxygen.

The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than
conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies.

Mass graves <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24505> in Gaza hospitals
previously raided by Israel show that civil defense staff found “bodies
without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

According to the Euro-Med report, “The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907,
the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all
forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian
areas. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies
the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”

Israel has also illegally deployed white phosphorus
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/lebanon-evidence-of-israels-unlawful-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-southern-lebanon-as-cross-border-hostilities-escalate/#:~:text=The%20usage%20of%20white%20phosphorus,and%20smoke%20it%20causes%20spread.>
weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to a *Washington Post*
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/12/11/israel-us-white-phosphorus-lebanon/#:~:text=DHEIRA%2C%20Lebanon%20%E2%80%94%20Israel%20used%20U.S.,found%20in%20a%20small%20village.>
analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were
supplied to Israel by the US.

Palestine’s Agricultural Work Committees Union said that Israel
intentionally uses chemical weapons on farmlands in the Gaza Strip to
contaminate its soil, posing an increased cancer risk to farmers.

The agricultural union's lobbying director, Moayyad Bsharat, also points to
Washington as the supplier of such munitions to Tel Aviv in an interview
with *Anadolu Agency*.

Bsharat stressed how chemical attacks render Gaza's soil unusable for five
years, and effectively harm its food security and public health.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20240501/38b92975/attachment.htm>