The fighting in Gaza, the civilian situation and more

According to an Amnesty International investigation, Israel used a US-made weapons guidance system in two airstrikes in Gaza that killed 43 civilians.

Fragments of a US-made Joint Direct Attack Weapon (JDAM) were found in the rubble of destroyed houses in the Deir al-Balah area of ​​central Gaza, according to a report released Tuesday by a human rights group.

Israel uses a variety of American weapons and ammunition, but the Amnesty report is one of the first attempts to link a US-made weapon to a specific attack that killed a significant number of civilians.

JDAM is, according to the US Air Force, “a guided wall kit that transforms existing unguided free-fall bombs into precision, severe-weather ‘smart’ munitions.

CNN cannot independently verify Amnesty’s findings.

Amnesty said its weapons experts and “remote sensing analyst” satellite images and photos of homes showed “artillery fragments recovered from the rubble” and destruction, the report explained. Photographs taken by Amnesty field workers.

As a result of these two attacks, 19 children, 14 women and 10 men died, according to the report.

The human rights organization said there was “no indication that there were military targets at the sites” of the airstrikes, or that the people living in the homes were legitimate military targets.

“The organization concluded that these airstrikes were direct attacks against civilians, civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks,” the report said, calling 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 unsubstantiated assumptions about IDF operations.”

“There is no intelligence about the military use of a particular structure, which, if not disclosed, contradicts any understanding of military action, and the report uses this false assumption to imply equally false and biased conclusions regarding the IDF. In line with the organization’s current prejudices and previous problematic work,” the Israeli military said.