Israel has allegedly used banned high-temperature weapons to “vaporise” Gazans, a new report has claimed.
An investigation by Al Jazeera said that about 2,842 people were documented as disappeared since October 2023 by Gaza’s Civil Defence teams.
According to the investigation, the number of dissapearances were established by a ‘method of elimination’ at strike sites.
Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered.”
“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.
What are thermobaric or vacuum bombs?
Thermobaric or Thermal bombs, also called vacuum or aerosol bombs, are munitions with fuel-air explosive properties which create extreme temperatures and pressure waves.
Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, who spoke to Al-Jazeera, said that the weapons don't just kill, they obliterate matter.
The effect is caused by a two-stage explosion.
First, the weapons disperse a cloud of fuel or fine particles into the air. Then a detonation occurs, creating a fireball and a vacuum effect that draws in surrounding air and oxygen.
Blast temperatures can reach up to 3,500 degrees Celsius. “To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov told the Qatari media agency. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius.”
The heat is often generated by a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder called tritonal, which is often used in US-made weapons like the MK-84.
The report by Al Jazeera mentions one site, Al-Tabin school in Gaza, as an example. After an Israeli strike, families were unable to find the bodies of people who were present at the location before the attack.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, said, “The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius.”
“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.”
The weapons are designed to maximise blast over a wider area. The damage is mainly caused by overpressure rather than shrapnel like in conventional explosives.
The investigation identified three different US-made munitions used in Gaza linked to disappearances:
MK-84 ‘Hammer’: A large unguided bomb filled with tritonal which can generate heat up to 3,500 C
BLU-109 bunker buster: A bomb that buries itself before detonating using a PBXN-109 explosive mix.
GBU-39: A precision bomb which uses a AFX-757 explosive designed to keep the building structure intact while killing via a pressure wave which ruptures lungs and a thermal wave which can incinerate tissue. GBU-39 fragments were found at the al-Tabin school attack.
The use of thermobaric weapons is governed by international humanitarian laws, which specify that the parties in a conflict must avoid attacks on civilians. Concerns have been raised by human rights organisations about the use of the weapons in densely populated urban areas.
In 2022, the Ukrainian government had also alleged that Russia had used thermobaric weapons during the beginning of the war.