@NateB_Panic:
Thermobaric bombs dropped on Gaza which create temperatures up to 3,000 Celsius and are supposed to be banned under international law were used to vaporise nearly 3,000 Palestinians. Vaporise. We’re dealing with world-historical evil
@tksshawa:
I cannot stress enough the obscenity of Israel using the most high-tech, murderously efficient weapons launched from state-of-the-art fighter jets against people in tents. Regardless of whether victims are resistance or civilians, this expanding asymmetry should terrify everyone.
@trikesatchii:
So Israel is using the Palestinians as a testing ground for weapons banned by the Geneva Conventions, in defiance of international law.
@marisakabas.bsky.social:
“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”
There are no words to adequately describe the evil here.
@heavyredaction:
As a person of no religious faith, I find myself lacking the language to speak about how the sanctity of human life has been profaned by the situation in Gaza. I literally don’t have the words to describe this in an appropriate register
@FordMaryam80338:
I think many of us are left bereft of any appropriate register with which to respond to this genocide
Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate, Al Jazeera investigation reveals how US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C have left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians. by Mohammad Mansour, 10 Feb 2026, Al Jazeera
At dawn on August 10, 2024, Yasmin Mahani walked through the smoking ruins of al-Tabin school in Gaza City, searching for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming, but of Saad, there was no trace.
“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic for an investigation that aired on Monday. She searched hospitals and morgues for days. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”
Mahani is one of thousands of Palestinians whose loved ones have simply vanished during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 people.
According to the Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the war began in October 2023, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh.
Experts and witnesses attributed this phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].
Grim forensic accounting
The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate, but the result of grim forensic accounting by Gaza’s Civil Defence.
Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal explained to Al Jazeera that teams use a “method of elimination” at strike sites. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal said.
“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.
The chemistry of erasure
The investigation detailed how specific chemical compositions in Israeli munitions turn human bodies into ash in seconds.
Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.
“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”
According to the investigation, the intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.
“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”
Anatomy of the bombs
The investigation identified specific US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza that are linked to these disappearances:
- MK-84 ‘Hammer’: This 900kg [2,000lb] unguided bomb packed with tritonal generates heat up to 3,500C [6,332F].
- BLU-109 bunker buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel had declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, this bomb evaporated 22 people. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse, burying itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix. This creates a large fireball inside enclosed spaces, incinerating everything within reach.
- GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the al-Tabin school attack. It uses the AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”
Basal of the Civil Defence confirmed finding fragments of GBU-39 wings at sites where bodies had vanished.
A ‘global genocide, not just an Israeli one’
Legal experts said the use of these indiscriminate weapons implicates not just Israel but also its Western suppliers.
“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,” said lawyer Diana Buttu, a lecturer at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Buttu argued that the supply chain is evidence of complicity. “We see a continuous flow of these weapons from the United States and Europe. They know these weapons do not distinguish between a fighter and a child, yet they continue to send them.”
Buttu emphasised that under international law, the use of weapons that cannot distinguish between combatants and noncombatants constitutes a war crime.
“The world knows Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons,” Buttu said. “The question is why are they allowed to remain outside the system of accountability.”
Collapse of international justice
Despite the International Court of Justice issuing provisional measures against Israel in January 2024, ordering it to prevent acts of genocide, and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024, the killing intensified.
Tariq Shandab, a professor of international law, argued that the international justice system has “failed the test of Gaza”.
“Since the ceasefire agreement [in October], more than 600 Palestinians have been killed,” Shandab said. He highlighted that the war has continued through siege, starvation and strikes. “The blockade on medicine and food is itself a crime against humanity.”
Shandab pointed to the “impunity” granted to Israel by the US veto power at the UN Security Council. However, he noted that universal jurisdiction courts in countries like Germany and France could offer an alternative path to justice, provided there is political will.
For Rafiq Badran, who lost four children in the Bureij refugee camp during the war, these technical definitions mean little. He was only able to recover small parts of his children’s bodies to bury.
“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”
***
@sethabramson.bsky.social:
I and millions of Americans believe exactly the same thing Kasparov does.
I do too, and have done since the painted kid rapist first got into power the first time. His and his kkklan’s hatred of anything not white man christian is off the charts.
Too many troops, too many new prisons, too much money not under Congressional supervision.
We’re not just witnessing a mass deportation scheme anymore.
This is something significantly bigger and scarier.
Israel’s genocide was the warm-up, the testing of killer tech like that which Steve Harper’s AWZ is involved with, and the mass murdering of innocent Palestinians and other non whites nearby. Israel rules much of the world and wants anti-Zionists silenced, likely exterminated. Nazi USA and the tech billionaires want to rape kids and women legally and turn the country (and world) white christian with only males having rights. They’ve been clear about this for years. Hitler’s extermination program on crack, fuelled by MAGAt ignorance and hate, and lust to rape.
@sethabramson.bsky.social:
UPDATE: A former Trump attorney has now publicly stated that he believes Kasparov has summarized Trump’s intentions perfectly: what the convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and pedophile protector-in-chief is planning is the end of democracy—a fascist regime—this year or next.
@chrislhayes.bsky.social:
This is the second account – the first being in Chicago – of DHS agents mass detaining people and then sorting them by race.
@joro.bsky.social:
More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e…
@mark79542085.bsky.social:
Demanded that zip-tied parents not comfort their manhandled and gassed kids?
Let me look that up in the bible.
