Israel Used New Weapon Prototype In Gaza Strip

[ Middle East News Service comment: For several months there have been reports circulating of a new weapon being used by Israel in Gaza. As a person committed to high scepticism I have tended to dismiss them especially since hard-left friends in Israel with contacts in the UN operation in Gaza said that the UN medical specialists have dismissed the story. This report is far more credible and the way Haaretz is treating it in English (the Hebrew edition is a bout to come out some time in the next hour) indicates the seriousness that they are taking it. The scientific explanation fills in the gaps that existed hitherto. It fills me with sadness to think that this is what “a light upon the nations” – a subject often raised in my schooling in Israel - has come down to – more efficient ways of killing people. –Sol Salbe.]

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/772933.html

Last update - 02:46 11/10/2006

Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip

By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent

An investigative report to be aired on Italian television Wednesday raises the possibility that Israel has used an experimental weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.

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The weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.

The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.

Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, formerly head of the IDF's weapons-development program, told the Italian reporters that "one of the ideas [behind the weapon] is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons."

The investigation, by Rai24news, follows reports by Gaza-based doctors of inexplicably serious injuries. The doctors reported an exceptionally large number of wounded who lost legs, of completely burned bodies and injuries unaccompanied by metal shrapnel. Some of the doctors also claimed that they removed particles from wounds that could not be seen in an x-ray machine.

According to those who testified, the wounded were hit by munitions launched from drones, most of them in July.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/772933.html

[The independent Middle East News Service concentrates on providing alternative information chiefly from Israeli sources. It is sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the AJDS. These are expressed in its own statements]

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