According to Amnesty International, Israel has used US-made weapons in airstrikes in Gaza that have killed dozens of civilians
An Amnesty International investigation found Israel used a US-made weapon guidance system in two airstrikes in Gaza in October that killed 43 civilians.
Fragments of a US-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kit were found in the rubble of destroyed houses in the Deir al-Balah district of central Gaza, according to a report published by the human rights organization on Tuesday.
Israel uses a variety of American weapons and ammunition, but the Amnesty report is one of the first attempts to link a U.S.-made weapon to a specific attack that killed a significant number of civilians.
According to the U.S. Air Force, the JDAM is a “guidance pilot that converts existing unguided free-fall bombs into precise, weatherproof ‘smart’ munitions.”
CNN cannot independently verify Amnesty’s findings.
Amnesty said its weapons experts and a “remote sensing analyst” examined satellite images and photos of the houses that showed “artillery fragments recovered from the rubble” and destruction, the report said. The photos were taken by Amnesty field staff.
As a result of these two attacks, 19 children, 14 women and 10 men died, the report said.
The rights group said it found “no evidence that there were military targets at the sites of the airstrikes” or that the people living in the houses were legitimate military targets.
“The organization concluded that these airstrikes were direct attacks on civilians, civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks,” said the report, which called for the attacks to be investigated as war crimes.
In a statement to CNN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called the report “flawed, biased and premature, based on unfounded assumptions about IDF operations.”
“The assumption that information about the military use of a particular structure does not exist unless disclosed is contrary to any understanding of military activities, and the report uses this false assumption to reach equally false and biased conclusions regarding to implicate the IDF. “consistent with the existing prejudices and previous problematic work of this organization,” the Israeli military said.