Mystery Of Israel's Secret Uranium Bomb

[ Middle East News Service comment: This story has already created some interest in the Israeli media but just how serious it has been taken is yet to be seen with today being the start of the working week and with today’s edition of some of the dailies available in a few hours. For its part, the Independent took this item seriously featuring it as its cover story. The paper also included a scientific analysis by Chris Bellamy but essentially it said that only Israel can explain the mystery.

It did explain, however, more about the isotope ratio being 108. “The Khiam sample, with 108 parts U-238 to one of U-235 - just under one per cent - is clearly enriched [uranium]- but not much.” Einyan Merkazi (Hebrew only) suggests that these bombs were US-made GBU-28 Bunker Busters rushed to Israel at the beginning of the war. [The US had to apologise to the British Government for notifying it of the delivery while the planes made a fuelling stop in Scotland.]

The site’s suggestion of the kind of bomb involved may be pure speculation. What is not speculation is Einyan Merkazi’s other comment: “As usual under these circumstance Israel starts by denying and that’s just what the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson did. But just like the cases of the phosphorus bombs and the cluster bombs a correction version will eventually be issued.” -Sol Salbe.]

Original: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece (subscription only)
Information Clearing House: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15432.htm

Mystery Of Israel's Secret Uranium Bomb

Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
By Robert Fisk
The Independent Newspaper

10/28/06 -- -- Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?

We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

.. snip…

Original: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece (subscription only)
Information Clearing House: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15432.htm

[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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