The United States has agreed to resume shipping 500-pound bombs to Israel while continuing to hold back supplies of powerful 2,000-pound bombs over concerns that Israeli forces will use the weapons in densely populated areas of Gaza, a US official said.
The US in May paused one shipment of 2,000-pound (900kg) and 500-pound (230kg) bombs due to concern over the impact the weapons could have if used by Israel during its ground invasion of the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinian civilians had sought shelter.
According to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, He added that it is clear that we are concerned about the ultimate use of the two thousand-pound bombs, particularly in light of Israel’s recent announcement that the Rafah campaign will cease.
On detonation, a 500-pound bomb can severely harm or kill everything or anyone within a 20-metre (65-foot) blast radius.
A 2,000-pound bomb has a destruction radius of 35 metres (115 feet), according to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), which conducts defence policy research and analysis.
The US official said the consignment of 500-pound bombs was in the same shipment as the 2,000-pound bombs, which had led to the stalled transfer of the smaller bombs to Israel.
The official said, the main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,”
“Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process,” the official added.
The US has notified Israel that it is releasing the 500-pound bombs but maintaining a hold on the larger ones, a person familiar with the matter said.
Reporting from the NATO summit in Washington DC, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said the move will “likely ramp up criticism of the Biden administration for its ongoing support for Israel in its war on Gaza”.
