NEARLY HALF OF ISRAELI MUNITIONS USED IN GAZA ARE UNGUIDED ‘DUMB BOMBS’: CNN

Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City targeted the Ansar compound, linked to Hamas, in the Gaza Strip FILE PHOTO Mahmud Hams / AFP – Getty Images

Thu 14 December 2023:

Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs,” according to a new US intelligence assessment reported by CNN.

The US news outlet 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 to 45 percent of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided and the rest have been precision-guided munitions, the CNN report added.

“Dumb bombs” do not contain a guidance system and they usually follow a ballistic trajectory or are dropped from aircraft.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden warned that Israel risks losing international support over its “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians.

According to experts that if Israel is using unguided munitions at the rate the US believes they are, that undercuts the Israeli claim that they are trying to minimize civilian casualties.

“I’m extremely surprised and concerned,” said Brian Castner, a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer who now serves as Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations.

“It’s bad enough to be using the weapons when they are precisely hitting their targets. It is a massive civilian harm problem if they do not have that accuracy, and if you can’t even give a benefit of the doubt that that the weapon is actually landing where the Israeli forces intended to,” Castner added.

Marc Garlasco, a former United Nations military analyst and war crimes investigator who served as chief of high value targeting on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff in 2003, said that using unguided munitions in a densely populated area like Gaza both greatly increases the chance that a target is missed and that civilians are harmed in the process.

Garlasco said the Israelis “should want to use the most precise weapon that they possibly can in such a densely populated area.” With an unguided munition, “there are so many variables to take into account that could lead to an incredibly different accuracy from one moment to the next,” Garlasco added. The US has deliberately phased out its own use of unguided munitions over the last decade, he noted.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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