U.S.-made bomb used in Israeli strike on Rafah that killed dozens, munitions experts say

Analysis of images of shrapnel collected at the site of a Israeli attack on Rafah on Sunday showed evidence of a bomb that was a U.S.-made GBU-39, two munitions experts told CBS News. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the attack and subsequent fires.

“I immediately knew the barracks was a GBU,” Trevor Ball, who worked as a munitions disposal — or bomb diffuser — technician for the U.S. Army for five years, told CBS News. “I’ve seen a lot of them in this conflict, and I even went back and looked at past conflicts just to get an idea of ​​what decree Israel used in the past when I started looking into this, and it’s a very distinct object issue, the GBU. It’s a round only.”

Photos and videos used to identify the remains of the bomb were taken by journalist Alam Sadeq in Gaza, who visited the site of the attack on Monday morning.

He told CBS News that he was searching the area, including around damaged tents that once housed civilians, when he identified several pieces of shrapnel with English words on them.

He said he recognized the words from bomb debris he had seen after an earlier attack on a building in Gaza, so he gathered the fragments into a pile and photographed them.

“The entire actuator assembly is unique,” ​​Ball told CBS News, explaining his identification process using images of shrapnel from the scene. “It just doesn’t happen in other rounds.”

Richard Weir, senior researcher in the Crisis, Conflict and Arms division at Human Rights Watch, agreed with Ball.

“One of the critical elements here, right, is… the tail section. It’s sometimes called the control section or actuator section, which moves the fins at the rear. This corresponds directly to the GBU-39 small diameter bomb , which is made in the USA,” said Weir. “It also matches the idea of ​​the warhead size description, in terms of explosive weight.”

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement on Tuesday that the Israeli attack on Rafah “was based on accurate intelligence indicating that those terrorists responsible for orchestrating and executing terrorist attacks against Israelis were gathering within of the specific structure we are targeting.”

Hagari said that “the attack was conducted with two munitions with small warheads, suitable for this targeted attack. We are talking about munitions with 17 kilograms of explosive material. This is the smallest munition our jets can use. After the attack, a large fire lit for reasons that are still being investigated. Our ammunition alone could not have sparked a fire of this size.”

After the deadly attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there had been a “tragic accident” and that Israel was investigating. He did not give further details.

Weir said the bomb was “a very small weapon as far as air-dropped munitions go” but still posed a “serious risk,” especially when used near populated areas. He told CBS News it was not the smallest weapon that could have been used to carry out a precision attack.

“Israel has many other munitions, in fact, that it has used in the past, in the fighting in Gaza and elsewhere,” Weir said. “So there are other options available. It’s simply not the case that this is the only weapon they could use to strike a target in or near a densely populated camp of internally displaced people.”

“I don’t know enough about aircraft integration, but it’s not the smallest munition they have for precision strikes,” said Ball, the former bomb diffuser. “They generally use drone-deployed weapons that have a much smaller effective area.”

Both Weir and Ball also said a bomb of any size could potentially start a fire.

“Explosives release a lot of heat when they explode and can often cause fires,” Ball said. “Technically, if you drop one in the desert and there’s no fuel nearby, yes, it can’t cause a fire by itself because there’s no fuel to burn. other flammable materials, from people who live and are in camps… could easily have caused a fire.”