No Safe Ground…” – How Israel Used 2,000-Pound Bombs In Gaza: Reports

New Delhi: 

In the first weeks of its war on Gaza, Israel used its most destructive bombs – the terrifying 2,000-pound, United States-made MK-84 ordnance – in areas it called “safe” for civilians and along evacuation routes it claimed were “safe” for innocent Gazans to travel to escape bombing, according to Artificial Intelligence-backed analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times and CNN.

These bombs, the Times said, were used at least 200 times and that “… even for those who followed every evacuation order, there was still no safety to be found”.

Both publications cited military experts as saying bombs of that size “are almost never dropped… in densely-populated areas”. And Gaza is one of the most densely populated in the world, with over two million people cramped into a 362 square kilometre strip of land. In fact, given the potential impact of such weapons, international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate bombing.

CNN quoted Marc Garlasco, a former war crimes investigator for the United Nations, as saying the ferocity of Tel Aviv’s bombing in the first month of the war “had not been seen since Vietnam”.