Reports have revealed that the Israeli regime used munitions made in the United States in its recent deadly strike on a tent camp in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, which left some 50 people dead.
The Israeli regime used U.S.-made GBU-39 in its attack on a tent camp in a designated safe zone in Rafah, explosive weapons experts found on Tuesday, after reviewing a video shared on social media of the scene by CNN, in which the tail of the small diameter bomb (SDB) was visible.
Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member, identified the fragment as being from a GBU-39.
Richard Weir, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, and Chris Lincoln-Jones, a former British Army artillery officer and weapons and targeting expert, also identified the fragment as being part of a US-manufactured GBU-39, when reviewing the video.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a former British Army artillery officer, also noted that the GBU-39 is a high-precision bomb “designed to attack strategically important point targets” and using it in a densely populated area will incur risks.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post newspaper quoted American officials as saying that Stacey Gilbert, one of the top officials of the U.S. State Department, resigned on Tuesday in protest against the war on Gaza and as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza.
On Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that dozens of people were killed and more than 200 others injured after a huge fire broke out following the Israeli military’s strike on a tented area for displaced people in Rafah.
The horrifying news sent shock waves through the globe, prompting world leaders to call for the immediate implementation of a World Court ruling to halt the regime’s invasion of the last refuge of Palestinians in Gaza.
Also on Tuesday, the Israeli regime carried out another attack on a tented camp in Rafah, killing at least 21 displaced Palestinians, as the regime’s tanks and armored vehicles advanced further into the center of the city.
Rafah, the town along the Egyptian border, which was once designated as a “safe zone” by the Israeli military forces, has now become the last refuge for over half of Gaza’s entire population of more than 2.3 million, who have fled their homes in other parts of the territory to shelter from incessant Israeli attacks.
Over the past three weeks, the regime’s invasion of Rafah has sent nearly a million Palestinians fleeing the city across a wide area. Most have already been displaced multiple times so far.
Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza on October 7 last year after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the usurping regime in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since then, the United States has supplied the Tel Aviv regime with more than 10,000 tons of military equipment, and used its veto power against all United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
In yet another brazen act of support for Israel’s months-long genocide against the besieged Gaza Strip, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden hinted that the regime’s deadly strikes in Rafah did not cross a “red line” and would not lead to a change in Washington’s policy towards Tel Aviv.
In press briefings on Tuesday, multiple administration officials described the Israeli massacre in Rafah as “heartbreaking” but claimed that the assaul was an airstrike and not a major ground operation.
The relentless Israeli military campaign against Gaza has so far killed more than 36,000 people, most of them women and children, and injured 81,136 others.