The Israeli army used a 230 kilos bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive expansive wave and spreads shrapnel through a wide area – to attack a cafeteria on Monday in front of Gaza Beach, as revealed to the tests to which The Guardian has had access.
International law experts argue that the use of this type of ammunition despite the known presence of unprotected civilians, including children, women and the elderly, was almost illegal and can constitute a war crime.
The fragments of the Café de Al Baqa ruins photographed by The Guardian have been identified by artillery experts as parts of an MK-82 pump of 230 kg of general use, a basic American manufacturing element in many bombing campaigns of the last decades.
The great crater that left the explosion was one more proof of the use of a large and powerful bomb such as the MK-82, according to two artillery experts.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that the attack against the cafeteria was being reviewed and that “before the attack measures were taken to mitigate the risk of damaging civilians using air surveillance.”
Medical and other areas said that between 24 and 36 Palestinians died in the attack on the cafeteria and tens were injured. Among the dead was a well -known filmmaker and an artist, a 35 -year -old housewife and a four -year -old boy. Among the injured were a 14 -year -old boy and a 12 -year -old girl.
According to international law based on Geneva conventions, a military force is prohibited to launch attacks that cause “fortuitous losses of civil lives” that are “Excessive or disproportionate” regarding the military advantage that is intended to obtain.
What is considered acceptable is open to interpretation, but experts said that only an objective whose elimination could have a very significant impact on the course of a conflict could justify the death of dozens of civilians.
The cafeteria had two floors – a superior open and a lower with large windows to the beach and the sea – and clearly visible accesses from above.
Gerry Simpson, from Human Rights Watch, declared: “The Israeli army has not said exactly who was directed by the attack, but has affirmed that he used aerial surveillance to minimize civil victims, which means that he knew that the cafeteria was full of customers at that time.
“The military would also have known that the use of a large guided bomb launched from the air would kill and mutilate many of the civilians who were there. The use of such a large weapon in an evidently crowded cafeteria of people involves the risk that it was a disproportionate or indiscriminate illegal attack and should be investigated as a war crime,” Simpson argues.
Dr. Andrew Forde, an attached professor of human rights at the Dublin City University, points out that the attack is frightening. “When there is a situation in which heavy ammunition is used, especially in a crowded civil space, even with the best aim in the world, there is necessarily an indiscriminate result that does not fulfill the Geneva agreements,” he says.
The family cafeteria Al Baqa was founded almost 40 years ago and was well known as a place of recreation for young people and families in the city of Gaza. It served a small selection of soft drinks, tea and cookies.
Although the vast majority of the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza suffer from increasing malnutrition and a constant famine threat, some have savings or salaries that allow them to frequent the few remaining coffees.
The port area where the Baqa cafeteria was not covered by any of the evacuation orders issued by the IDF to warn of the imminence of military operations.
Marc Schack, an associate professor of International Law at the University of Copenhagen, says: “It is almost impossible exceptional ”.
Trevor Ball, armament researcher and former explosive deactivation technician of the US army, identifies a JDAM tail and a thermal battery that, according to him, suggests that an MPR500 or MK-82 bomb had been launched.
Another expert with extensive experience in recent conflicts identifies the bomb in a similar way. A third says that he cannot make a reliable evaluation from the images that had been presented to him.
Israel has a wide range of ammunition and has frequently used much smaller weapons to carry out precision attacks against individuals in Gaza, Lebanon and its recent aerial offensive in Iran.
The IDF stated in an extensive statement earlier this year that even the most sophisticated measures used to assess civilians are almost never perfect and that their choice of ammunition is “a professional issue that depends on the nature of the objective of the attack.”
“While some objectives are suitable for smaller loads, others may require heavier ammunition to achieve the success of the mission – for example, when it is intended to destroy structures built with certain hard materials, large structures or underground tunnels -“, says the communication.
On Tuesday, an Israeli government spokesman said that the IDF “never, never attack civilians.” Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, an accusation that the Islamist group denies.
