Not Seen Since Vietnam: “Israel” Dropped Hundreds of 2,000-Pound Bombs on Gaza

By Staff, CNN

CNN revealed on Friday that “in the first month of its war in Gaza, ‘Israel’ dropped hundreds of massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away.”

Based on CNN analysis, the satellite imagery from those early days of the “Israeli” aggression reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters [40 feet] in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs.

Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on Daesh in Mosul, Iraq.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth, so the use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect.

“The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,” said John Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimizing civilian harm in conflict.

Marc Garlasco a former US military intelligence analyst and former UN war crimes investigator, said the density of “Israel’s” first month of bombardment in Gaza had “not been seen since Vietnam.”

Garlasco, now a military adviser at PAX, a Dutch non-governmental organization that advocates for peace, reviewed all the incidents analyzed in this report for CNN.

“You’d have to go back to the Vietnam war to make a comparison,” said Garlasco. “Even in both Iraq wars it was never that dense.”

The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters [about 1,198 feet], or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy weaponry, such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. According to authorities in Gaza, about 20,000 people have been martyred since October 7.

Most of the dead are women and children, according to those figures.

Last week, US intelligence sources told CNN that 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-surface munitions dropped on Gaza by then were so-called dumb bombs, unguided munitions that can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in densely populated territories like Gaza.

Some of these are likely to be the 2,000-pound bombs detected in the satellite imaging of the craters. “Israel” has a large arsenal of the big bombs, known as MK-84s. When a GPS-guided kit is attached to the MK-84, the bomb becomes known as a GBU-31.

According to two people familiar with the matter, the US has provided “Israel” with more than 5,400 MK-84s since October 7.

“The devastation that we’ve seen for communities in Gaza is unfortunately, co-signed by the United States,” said CIVIC’s Chappell. “Too much of it is carried out by bombs that were made in the United States.”