Rafah bombings (Edited by Mumsnet)

[TwilightSkies]

Where the hell are all the Palestinians meant to go now?
They were TOLD to go to Rafah, that Rafah was a safe place.
It’s just open extermination at this point.

Also Israel has not killed that many Hamas so far I don’t think. Not that long ago on the television I saw an Israeli spokesperson say the figure was 10,000. But there were 30,000 - (40,000?) to start with. So that would mean lots are left.

I have tried searching but cannot find facts on this.

This war could go on for very many years, as BN has said.

It make good "sense" if you deciede to read the whole or at least more than you quoted. I will repost some of it in the vain hope you are able to understand more easily

Sugar that is supplied as food for the people of Gaza is stolen by Hamas to fuel their rockets which are fired at the people of Israel like they did again the other day using "long rang rockets" that require dozens of large packs of sugar per rocket

Hamas uses its people as human shields, dresses in civilian clothing and then blames Israel for the deaths of ordinary people of Gaza inc some women and men they still hold hostage

All this would stop as soon as Hamas surrender
Hamas is a nasty, disgusting group of people that drove out, killed their own people of a opposition group when Israel took out settlers from Gaza many years ago. Hamas drove out Fatha just because this group of people from Gaza were leaning towards friendship with Israel

That's not the way paragraphs work they are standalone pieces of written language which don't require reading the whole piece, should have internal consistency and more importantly communicate a logical train of thought

If you'd said it was a typo/formatting error that might have shone more light on what you were trying to express

Rather than doubling down ad infinitum and never admitting you're wrong/mis-informed whatever you want to call it

So are you saying that fertilizer and sugar destined for the ordinary people of Gaza is not being used by the tonne is being used by Hamas to fuel their short and long range rockets to attack Israeli civilians???

No that's not what I'm saying

That's what you are saying - over and over again

It's so far off topic it's nearly on the moon

How is the fact that Hamas are stealing from the people of Gaza and using the people's fertilzer by the tonne as well as sugar for their milliles to kill the ordinary people of Israel??

Anyway back on topic

Israeli army says it used small munitions in Rafah airstrike, and fire was caused by secondary blast

The Israeli military says an initial investigation into a strike that sparked a deadly weekend fire in a tent camp in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has found the blaze was caused by a secondary explosion.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Tuesday that the military fired two 17-kilogram (37-pound) munitions that targeted two senior Hamas militants. He said the munitions would have been too small to ignite a fire on their own and the military is looking into the possibility that weapons were stored in the area.

this sounds more likely that the 2000lb bombs reported earlier - no massive craters on the satellite images or is this the rumoured Hamas munitions dump?

None of this has been or is going into Gaza as humanitarian aid to be stolen.

Where have you been? Anything and everything that could be used by Hamas- including fertiliser and sugar- are banned as dual use.

There are also hundreds other things banned that aren’t really dual use too.

In addition, the IDF is destroying every farm in their path to ensure no home-made fertiliser.

“Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Tuesday that the military fired two 17-kilogram (37-pound) munitions that targeted two senior Hamas militants. He said the munitions would have been too small to ignite a fire on their own and the military is looking into the possibility that weapons were stored in the area.”

Have we not been seeing for months the fact that Palestinians have been reduced to building little cookfires with scraps or small gas canisters? And where are these located? Just by the doorway of their tents or between tents because they are so closely jammed together. You drop a bomb on several tents each with a cook fire surrounded by flammable fuel and right next to flammable tents and bedding and this is what you get.

It is entirely predictable and the idea that families with children would be sleeping on top of munitions is outlandishly bizarre. You would have seen multiple explosions if this had been a case and eyewitnesses don’t report the airstrikes followed by lots of other big bangs.

“found the blaze was caused by a secondary explosion.”
”the military fired two 17-kilogram (37-pound) munitions”

Bomb #2 was the secondary explosion. There were no further explosions.

@SummerFeverVenice call me cynical but think that this is about building an alibi for the 'tragic mistake/mishap' - initially it was the nearby 'Hamas compound' but than was blown out of the water by the publication of the independent satellite imagery [posted on the other thread]

Agree with you that these tents are already a fire-trap without anyone chucking explosives at them and that would be a risk known to the IDF [one hopes]

The Hamas cache of explosives [no longer in a 'compound' - see satellite images] but just in one of the tents brings it back to the 'human shield' story even tho' with their 'precise intelligence' they'd surely know that the Hamas officials they were targeting would not be without weapons/arms

IDK maybe I'm wrong

According to CNN, Israel told Biden another different scenario to explain the deadly blaze:

So instead of 2 precision munitions, 1 was used and instead of a possible weapons dump, a nearby fuel tank caused the blaze.

”A US official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.
“We can’t confirm that but it’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said, “and we assume we will learn more once Israel completes its investigation.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/27/middleeast/gaza-rafah-displaced-people-camp-israel-strike-mime-intl/index.html

You would think the first thing they would know for sure in the investigation is how many bombs they dropped.

@Efacsen
initially it was the nearby 'Hamas compound' but than was blown out of the water by the publication of the independent satellite imagery [posted on the other thread]

Yes, good point. I too saw the satellite imagery from only hours before the attack. It was all tents.

And after the strike was 4 or 5 completely charred tents in the bottom left hand corner - made me think it could have been so much worse

The CNN account just raises more questions

A lot of the bodies are charred beyond recognition so it would be harder to discern if any Hamas were there or not. Even if two Hamas were there, I don’t agree that it is acceptable collateral damage. Even small bombs like the IDF report using have a large blast and kill radius in the open. They aren’t precise when used on tents- which are no different from in the open.

It’s not like using them on a concrete, reinforced with steel walled or brick house.

Haaretz yesterday

GAZA: Overnight into Monday, the IDF said it struck senior Hamas members in the southern Gazan city of Rafah "according to international law, using precise munitions, and based on prior intelligence indicating the use of the area by Hamas." The strike ignited a blaze in a tent camp for displaced people that killed at least 45 Palestinian civilians, Hamas' Health Ministry reported. An Israeli government spokesperson said an initial probe of the incident showed that the airstrike set off the fire which killed the civilians.

The IDF said that prior to the strike, "many steps were taken to reduce the chances of harm to uninvolved people, including a visual aerial inspection, the use of precision weaponry, and the use of additional intelligence information – on the basis of which it was estimated that harm to uninvolved civilians was not expected."

’Based on prior intelligence’. Either they had very poor intelligence or knew.

That doesn’t appear to be what it’s saying. AFAIK the guided munition blast sent shrapnel which exploded the fuel container which caused the blaze. They didn’t expect to harm civilians because the fire happened a fair way from the actual blast zone (around 100m I believe). I suppose things like this are why they don’t say “we guarantee zero uninvolved civilian casualties”.

It doesn't look like that on the satellite images - the story has moved on since then

And what about the 2nd missile? Is it one or 2 missiles?

Scrolling leaves is right, as are you, as am I and Ecfasen-the issue is that the IDF are putting out multiple stories only hours apart to different news outlets. The question is why? Investigations are always same bits of info they do know gradually added to. Not multiple different stories hours apart.

The fuel container theory said there was a fuel tank 150m from the airstrike, but you can see no fuel tanks in the satellite imagery.

IDF has also claimed “there were no tents in the area” of the airstrike when they put this story out but the satellite imagery disproved this.

Even small bombs like the IDF report using have a large blast and kill radius in the open. They aren’t precise when used on tents- which are no different from in the open.

It’s not like using them on a concrete, reinforced with steel walled or brick house

Thinking about what you say here @SummerFeverVenice this may be the crux of the error/mishap/mistake?

For months the IDF have been bombing robust walled buildings with precision and dumb bombs - AFAIC there have been no strikes directly targeting tents [people have been killed in tents but the actual target was a nearby building]

Now however they are in Rafah with it's acres and acres of flimsy flammable tents [450k people and 4 battalions of Hamas] and they don't really have the experience/?skill required to make precision strikes on tents without causing a big conflagration all around the strike target

Another strike this afternoon went the same way - tho' thankfully with less loss of life in the resulting blaze

.

I think it is the crux of the problem.

CNN and Al Jazeera have had weapons experts examine the footage and they identified a GBU-39/B bomb in the debris of the tents. This is actually a 250lb bomb, but the warhead is the 37lb/17kilos of munitions that IDF reported.

This bomb is designed to go through 1m of soil and then 3m of steel reinforced concrete. It has a blast radius of 26ft/8m.

It does in fact ignite. I found these photos of tests where they sent one of these GBU-39 small diameter bombs through a concrete bridge to blow up a parked plane.
https://www.ausairpower.net/APA-SDB.html

Imagine the same bomb going through a thin layer of plastic and then igniting the plastic, the bedding, any cookstoves and fuel…Keep in mind a lot of the blast of fire is contained by the concrete bridge- it would rip through plastic sheeting.

IDF can’t really investigate as they are not on the ground.
I looked at satellite photos again and you can clearly see it was an evacuation camp fenced in, with UN markings.

There is no fuel tank, there is no warehouse. So the speculation that the bomb hit something else that kicked off the fire doesn’t make sense- especially since these weapons experts identified the bits of the bomb in the remains of the tents meaning it was a direct hit on the tents.

Correction- 2m of reinforced concrete /5ft.
I had a typo

There are now new satellite photos of the wider area - with a second much more extensive encampment totally incinerated in the after views which IDF are claiming was due to a Hamas jeep carrying ammunition exploding after a direct hit

A 'developing story' indeed

Interesting. Do you have a link?

Ive just found a report of an ‘intercepted phone call’ where alleged Hamas say that the “Jewish bomb” hit a “munitions warehouse” and “bags of money went flying” and “lots of explosions went off” sounds as credible as the IDF ‘intercepted phone call’ about the Ali Arab hospital courtyard bombing that was later proven to be faked.

https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hamas-israel-war-24/briefings-by-idf-spokesperson-rear-admiral-daniel-hagari/may-24-press-briefings/press-briefing-about-recent-events-in-rafah-by-idf-spokesperson-radm-daniel-hagari-may-28-2024/

and
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-hidden-store-of-terror-munitions-may-have-caused-deadly-rafah-blaze/

(on the satellite map it has a before picture for “area Hamas claims IDF hit” when we know it WAS hit from satellite photos.)

Here is the IDF tweet

https://x.com/IDF/status/1795487775598231990