Israel using thermal weapons that melt, evaporate victims’ bodies in Gaza: Rights group

A Geneva-based right group urges an investigation into Israel’s potential use of banned thermal weapons in its genocidal war campaign against Gaza which could evaporate or melt victim bodies.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in a report on Tuesday said that testimonies received by the rights group show that victims’ bodies appear to have evaporated or melted as a result of Israel’s bombing of residential homes in the Gaza Strip.

“An international committee of experts must be established to look into the weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip, ongoing since 7 October 2023, including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate,” the report said.

According to the Euro-Med Monitor report, thousands of bodies in Gaza remain missing and they “no longer exist” and may have “turned to ashes,” raising questions about the type of bombs used in the attacks.

The report added that the “shockingly high” death toll in Gaza raises fears about the potential use of “thermal weapons”, or what are known as “vacuum bombs”, well-known in military circles for their efficacy in demolishing caves and underground tunnel complexes.

Israel claims that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has dug an extensive network of tunnels under schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure as cover for its activities to justify its targeting of those facilities.

These claims have never been completely verified and in some cases were disproved by media investigations.  

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The report further quotes a Gaza resident, Ahmed Omar, who lost 15 members of his family, including his parents, in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home on October 15, 2023.

Omar told Euro-Med Monitor that despite “strenuous attempts” to retrieve the victims’ bodies, three victims—Raghad Saleh Farwaneh, 14, Ola Saleh Farwaneh, 7, and Rahaf Ahmed Qanita, 8— were never found while they were present in the house at the time of the attack.

Jamal Awni who also lost seven family members in an Israeli bombing in Deir al-Balah on January 6, told the rights group that all efforts to find his 28-year-old daughter Shaima had been unsuccessful.

Gaza Civil Defense Service has also in several statements pointed to the “dissolution of victims’ corpses and their conversion into ashes.”

“An international investigation must be launched into Israel’s probable use of internationally banned weapons, including thermobaric bombs,” Euro-Med Monitor said.

It also highlights that the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas.

“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”

Two weeks into the war, Gaza’s Health Ministry warned in a statement that “medical staff monitored the usage of unusual weapons that caused severe burns to the bodies of the martyrs and wounded.”

Analysts believe that the Gaza war is the latest laboratory for Israel’s arms industry as the regime is known to test its weapons on Palestinians in its offensives against the occupied nation.

At least 34,568 Palestinians have been killed and 77,765 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.

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