Israel "improperly" used at least one American bomb in its highly controversial attack on a United Nations school in central Gaza Thursday that reportedly killed more than 30 men, women and children, according to an analysis by U.S. Defense Department officials following the attack.
The nose of a US-made Boeing GBU-39 small-diameter bomb Boeing bomb could be seen amid the rubble after Israel's attack, the Washington Post reported.
It's the same kind of bomb Israel used in another hightly controversial airstrike last month that triggered global condemnation after killing 45 displaced civilians sheltering at a tent camp in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to an analysis of debris by the New York Times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called last month's tent camp strike a "tragic mistake." But he said the school compound was attacked as part of an Israeli army hunt for Hamas militants.
Palestinian families displaced in the Israel-Hamas war were sheltering in the school when it was struck. At the hospital morgue, NPR documented one body bag labeled as containing the body parts of five children. A total of at least nine children were killed, according to authorities.
A Pentagon official told NPR that Israel had used the bomb in the school attack improperly because use of the bomb is limited to situations where it would cause low collateral damage — but instead it killed several people in the targeted school.
"Israel is using the most advanced, precise and effective bombs the U.S. produces like a cudgel," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Israel's conduct.
An Israeli Army spokesman told NPR that he was unaware of any civilian casualties in the school strike, and that Hamas fighters were the targets.
Wes Bryant, a retired official of the elite special warfare branch of the U.S. Air Force, told NPR that he has been struck by Israel's recent use of the American bombs in which "large numbers of civilians have again been killed. They are using munitions intended to be both precision and low collateral damage — but they are not employing them in a manner in which those qualities are applied," he added.
After the school attack, State Department spokesman Matt Miller said at a briefing Thursday: "We are pressing the government of Israel and the IDF to be completely transparent about what happened here."
