Nearly 50% of Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are ‘dumb bombs’, US intelligence says
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Israel has kept up its barrage of the Gaza Strip despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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CAIRO/GAZA - Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs”, according to a new United States intelligence assessment.
It was reported by US broadcaster CNN on Dec 13. The news channel said the assessment was compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it.
About 40 per cent to 45 per cent of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used since Oct 7 have been unguided and the rest have been precision-guided, the CNN report added.
Unguided munitions are usually less precise. When used in densely populated areas, they can pose a greater threat to civilians.
The rate at which Israel is using the so-called dumb bombs may be contributing to the soaring death toll in Gaza, CNN said.
Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a member of Israel’s security Cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, rejected the characterisation of Israel’s air strikes as indiscriminate.
“There is no such thing as ‘dumb bombs’. Some bombs are more accurate, some bombs are less accurate. What we have are mostly pilots who are precise,” he told Army Radio. “There is no chance that Israel’s air force or other military units fired at targets that were not terror targets.”
Israel pounded the length of Gaza on Dec 13, killing families in their homes even as Washington dispatched an envoy to encourage its ally to be more precise in its war against Hamas.
Two weeks after a truce collapsed, the war has entered an intense phase, with fighting now raging across the entire Palestinian enclave and international organisations warning of a complete humanitarian catastrophe.
In Rafah city, jammed with people in makeshift tents on Gaza’s southern edge, women and men wept at the morgue where the bodies of those killed in the latest overnight air strikes were laid out, wrapped in bloodied shrouds. Some were small children.
The adjacent homes of the Abu Dhbaa and Ashour families were obliterated by a massive air strike. Gaza health authorities said 26 people were killed there.
Mr Fadel Shabaan rushed to the area after the bombing. “It was difficult because of the dust and people’s screams. We went there, and we saw our neighbour who had 10 martyrs. This is a safe camp. There is nothing here. The children play soccer in the street,” he said.
Israel has brushed off calls for a ceasefire, including a resolution at the United Nations Security Council blocked by a US veto last week and another that passed overwhelmingly in the General Assembly this week.
Washington has provided diplomatic cover for its longstanding ally, but expressed increasing alarm over civilian deaths. US President Joe Biden went further this week, describing Israeli bombing as “indiscriminate”.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who will be in Israel from Dec 14 to 15, will discuss with the Israelis the need to be more precise with their strikes, spokesman John Kirby said.
Israel launched its campaign in retaliation for a rampage by Hamas, whose fighters killed 1,200 Israelis and seized 240 hostages in a cross-border raid on Oct 7
Since then, Israel has laid much of the Palestinian enclave to waste. At least 18,000 people have been killed and around 50,000 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced from their homes, many several times. Food and medical supplies are running out, and international aid bodies say they fear mass deaths from hunger and disease.
Despite Israel’s pledges to reduce harm to civilians, it has extended its ground campaign from the north to the south in December, leaving no part of the enclave unscathed. It says it is offering warnings where it can before striking an area.
In the main southern city of Khan Younis, where Israeli forces reached the centre this week, a whole city block was bombed overnight to dust. Though most people fled after Israeli warnings, neighbours digging with a hand shovel believed four people were inside. One body was recovered.
“It is a total destruction. May God take revenge on them,” Ms Nesmah al-Byouk, returning to the ruins of the home she had fled three days ago, told Reuters. “We came and saw everything destroyed. The house, the factory, our neighbours and house are all gone. Where can we go to now?”
In the north, including the ruins of Gaza City, fighting has only escalated since Israel announced that its troops had largely completed their military objectives in November.
Ms Um Mohammad, 53, a mother of seven still living in Gaza City about 1.5km from the Shejaiya district, said the sound of intensified bombing overnight indicated the Israelis were seeking vengeance.
“The resistance hurt them badly there and they are trying to get revenge by bombing the civilians and destroying homes,” she said.
Also in the north in Jabalia city, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli forces stormed a hospital, detaining and abusing medical staff and preventing them from treating a group of wounded patients, at least two of whom died.
Twelve children were in the intensive care unit where the electricity was cut and there was no milk, Gaza health spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said.
Israel’s military said fighters were operating inside the hospital, 70 of whom surrendered there “with weapons in hand” and were now undergoing interrogation.
Israel has faced growing diplomatic isolation as civilian deaths mount and a humanitarian catastrophe worsens.
On Dec 12, three-quarters of the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly voted in favour of calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire
On the same day, Mr Biden said Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians was costing international support.
Mr Netanyahu said his country’s military would fight on despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
Gaza’s coastal strip is now facing a public health disaster due to the collapse of its health system and the spread of disease, the UN humanitarian office said.
The vast majority of the population of 2.3 million has fled their homes, leaving them vulnerable to illnesses including gastroenteritis and Hepatitis A, Palestinian doctors and aid organisations say.
“What’s happening is that people are fleeing, people are being displaced constantly, some of them are being displaced multiple times, many of them don’t have the hygiene supplies that they need, many of them don’t have the winter clothes,” said Ms Juliette Touma, director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
“We’ve got a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster,” said Ms Lynn Hastings, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Tanker attacked
Fears of the conflict spreading in a volatile region remain.
A tanker in the Red Sea off Yemen's coast was fired on by gunmen in a speedboat and targeted with missiles, maritime sources said on Dec 13. It is the latest incident to threaten the vital shipping lane after Yemeni Houthi forces, which are backed by Iran, warned ships not to travel to Israel.
The cost of the Israel-Hamas war to neighbours Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan
The Biden administration is delaying the sale to Israel of more than 20,000 US-made rifles over concerns about increasing attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Some 271 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces, including 69 children, in the occupied West Bank in 2023, the UN Palestinian refugee agency said.
At least 288 displaced people in shelters run by the agency have been killed in Gaza since Oct 7, the agency added in a post on X.
The number of Israeli soldiers killed in the ground offensive has reached 115, and more than 600 wounded, according to an Israeli military website.
“Your heroism, and of those who unfortunately fell, and we couldn’t bring them to this state of rehabilitation, are the light which repels the darkness, and in this room there is so much light,” Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel’s General Staff, told injured soldiers during a ceremony for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in Ramat Gan.
Protests, vigils
Some Biden administration staff held a vigil in front of the White House late on Dec 13 to call on Washington to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
The group of around 60 people carried a banner that read: “President Biden, your staff demands a ceasefire.”
“We were horrified by the brutal Oct 7 attacks on Israeli civilians, and have been horrified by the disproportionate response by the Israeli government, which has indiscriminately killed thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza and displaced over a million more,” the protesters said in a statement read by Mr Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned a few weeks ago.
In New York, a demonstration was held demanding the release of the remaining 135 hostages held in Gaza.
Most Israelis say the army should not back off
“It’s awful. It’s awful that there are so many civilian casualties,” said Jerusalem resident Adam Saville. “But this is war, and that’s what happens in war.” REUTERS
