Tel Aviv, February 10 (RHC)-- A recent report has revealed that Israeli forces used toxic gas to suffocate Palestinian fighters and captives in Gaza tunnels in the course of the bloody onslaught against the besieged coastal sliver.
The investigation by online +972 Magazine and Local Call news site said the occupation forces “intentionally weaponized toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate” Palestinian resistance fighters they believed were taking cover underground over the war.
The report is based on information derived from officers with the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate and the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet, who have been involved in tunnel targeting strikes since the onset of the Gaza genocidal war on October 7, 2023.
The investigation found that occupation forces tried to “compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network.”
The policy resulted in the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage,” while high-profile Hamas commanders were being sought out.
The report highlighted that some of these strikes “which were the deadliest in the war and often used American bombs, are known to have killed Israeli captives.”
“Pinpointing a target inside a tunnel is hard, so you attack a [wide] radius,” an Israeli Military Intelligence source told +972 and Local Call.
The source noted that the radius would be as large as “tens and sometimes hundreds of meters,” meaning the bombardments collapsed multiple apartment buildings on their occupants without warning. This was referred to by Palestinians as “fire belts.”
Bunker busters release the lethal gas carbon monoxide as a byproduct, which can kill people inside a tunnel through asphyxiation even at a distance of hundreds of meters, the report added, explaining that Israel has known about this matter since 2017.
“The gas stays underground, and people suffocate,” Brigadier General (reserves) Guy Hazoot said. “[We realized] we could effectively target anyone underground using the Air Force’s bunker-buster bombs, which, even if they don’t destroy the tunnel, release gases that kill anyone inside. The tunnel then becomes a death trap.”
Three Israeli hostages, identified as Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano, were definitively killed by asphyxiation as a result of a November 10, 2023 bombing that targeted Hamas brigade commander Ahmed Ghandour in northern Gaza, the report said.
Israeli military officials told +972 and Local Call that the intent was to use the chemical byproduct solely to kill Hamas fighters “who intended to fight the Israeli army.”
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the killing of at least 48,181 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injury of 111,638 others since early October 2023.
A ceasefire agreement went into effect in Gaza on January 19, temporarily halting Israel’s genocidal aggression against the coastal region.
