Unnamed U.S. officials have informed the Wall Street Journal that the roughly 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells which the United States has sent to Israel since Oct. 7 include 100 BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs, which each carry a 2,000-pound warhead.
The Dec. 1 Wall Street Journal exclusive reports that this is the first time U.S. officials have made public the total number of munitions transferred to Israel for its war on Gaza or disclosed that bunker-buster bombs have been provided.
Many other kinds of bombs are being supplied, as well. “Among the munitions the U.S. has transferred to Israel are more than 5,000 Mk82 unguided or `dumb’ bombs, more than 5,400 Mk84 2,000-pound warhead bombs, around 1,000 GBU-39 small diameter bombs, and approximately 3,000 JDAMs, which turn unguided bombs into guided `smart’ bombs, according to an internal U.S. government list of the weapons described to the Wall Street Journal by U.S. officials,” the Journal also reports. It adds: “U.S. officials say Israel used an American-provided bomb with a large payload in one of the deadliest strikes of the entire war, an attack that leveled an apartment block in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people”—one of whom Israel said was a Hamas terrorist.
U.S. officials may be tut-tutting Israel about lessening civilian “casualties,” but the weapons and munitions shipments continue, the Journal acknowledges.
There are legal, as well as moral implications of this report. UN Secretary General António Guterres described the clear violations of international humanitarian law in regards to protections of civilians being committed in Israel’s war against Palestine in his briefing to the Nov. 29 UN Security Council hearing on Palestine. The violations he cited included that “the nature and scale of death and destruction are characteristic of the use of wide-area explosive weapons in populated areas, with a significant impact on civilians.”
