Israel used toxic gas to suffocate Palestinian resistance fighters, captives in Gaza’s tunnels, report finds

Israeli occupation forces bombed Gaza and “intentionally weaponised toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate” Palestinian resistance fighters they believed were hiding underground, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed yesterday.

The report is based on information obtained from 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers who have been involved in tunnel-targeting operations since 7 October 2023. It found that occupation forces tried to “compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network”.

This policy allowed for the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage”, while senior Hamas commanders were being sought out.

The report highlighted that some of these strikes “which were the deadliest in the war and often used American bombs, are known to have killed Israeli hostages.”

“Pinpointing a target inside a tunnel is hard, so you attack a [wide] radius,” a Military Intelligence source told +972 and Local Call. This radius would be as large as “tens and sometimes hundreds of metres,” meaning these bombing operations collapsed multiple apartment buildings on their occupants without warning. This was referred to by Palestinians as “fire belts”.

Bunker-buster bombs release the lethal gas carbon monoxide as a byproduct, which can kill people inside a tunnel through asphyxiation even at a distance of hundreds of metres, the report adds, explaining that Israel has known about this since 2017.

“The gas stays underground, and people suffocate,” Brigadier General (reserves) Guy Hazoot said. “[We realised] we could effectively target anyone underground using the Air Force’s bunker-buster bombs, which, even if they don’t destroy the tunnel, release gases that kill anyone inside. The tunnel then becomes a death trap.”

Three Israeli hostages — Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano — were definitively killed by asphyxiation as a result of a 10 November 2023 bombing that targeted Ahmed Ghandour, a Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza, the report said.

Military officials told +972 and Local Call that the intent was to use the chemical byproduct solely to kill Hamas operatives “who intended to fight the IDF [Israeli occupation forces].”

Israel’s efforts to maximise the chances of killing senior militants hiding underground also included attempts to crush parts of a tunnel network and trap the targets inside.

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