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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that 'turn victims to ash'</h1><p class="gmail-">Israel has indiscriminately used US-supplied white phosphorus shells in their attacks on Gaza and Lebanon</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">News Desk</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>MAY 1, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/rights-group-urges-probe-into-israeli-arms-that-turn-victims-to-ash">https://thecradle.co/articles/rights-group-urges-probe-into-israeli-arms-that-turn-victims-to-ash</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/8fd002f4-07b5-11ef-bc80-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="464" height="261" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>(Photo Credit: Zuma Press)</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p>The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) released a <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6290">report</a> on 30 April urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal weapons.</p><p>“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.</p><p>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.</p><p>“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.</p><p>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.”</p><p>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.</p><p>The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies.</p><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24505">Mass graves</a>
in Gaza hospitals previously raided by Israel show that civil defense
staff found “bodies without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media
Office. </p><p>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.”</p><p>Israel has also illegally deployed <a href="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.">white phosphorus</a> weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.</p><p>According to a <a href="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."><i>Washington Post</i></a> analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were supplied to Israel by the US.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <i>Anadolu Agency</i>.</p><p>Bsharat
stressed how chemical attacks render Gaza's soil unusable for five
years, and effectively harm its food security and public health.</p></span></div></div></div></div>
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