Middle East
Report: US delivered bunker buster bombs to Israel
Smoke rises after the end of the ceasefire following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. photo
© Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
According to a media report, Israel is receiving increased support from its ally the USA in its fight against Hamas, which also operates out of tunnels. These include bunker-busting bombs.
As the US newspaper “Wall Street Journal” reported, citing US officials, Israel was provided with 100 bunker buster bombs with a BLU-109 warhead alone after the unprecedented Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7th. The delivery of additional weapons and ammunition, including around 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells, began shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel and has continued in recent days.
USA: Avoid civilian casualties
The US, which supplied its most important ally in the region with arms and ammunition before the Gaza war began, had not previously disclosed the total number of weapons delivered to Israel or the bunker buster bombs, it said.
The BLU-109 warhead is designed to precisely destroy bunkers and other deeply buried massively hardened targets such as tunnels. Hamas has a network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip that extends hundreds of kilometers beneath the coastal strip. The tunnels not only offer Hamas good hiding places, but the terrorists can also unexpectedly emerge from underground and disappear again.
Israel has a state-of-the-art army that also has its own bunker-busting bombs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US is urging its key ally to ensure that civilian casualties are avoided when delivering much of the ammunition delivered after the Hamas massacre. After a week-long ceasefire, fighting began again in Gaza on Friday. While rockets were fired towards Israel again from Gaza, Israel’s ground, air and naval forces again attacked hundreds of targets in the north and south of the sealed-off coastal area.