Press Release: New study shows Israel air-dropped 2000lb bombs within lethal and damage ranges of hospitals in Gaza

BOSTON, MA – October 10, 2024 

A new study reveals that between October 7 and November 17, 2023, the Israeli military air-dropped nearly 600 highly destructive 2000 lb bombs with the capacity to damage hospital infrastructure and kill or cause severe injury hundreds of meters away. One-third of the bombs identified were within dangerous proximity of hospitals across the Gaza Strip.

“This study supports emerging evidence that the Israeli military has disregarded the protection of hospitals, mandated by international humanitarian law, through the systematic pattern of dropping massive M-84 bombs close enough to hospitals to knowingly cause significant damage, injury, and death. The damage to hospitals due to these and other munitions will have immediate and long-term effects on the health of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” said Yara M. Asi, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida, Visiting Scientist at the FXB Center, and one of the authors of the study.

Using publicly available data from CNN and The New York Times satellite imagery investigations, the authors created a map of the Gaza Strip with the locations of craters formed by air-dropped 2000 lb bombs. They then overlaid this map with geospatial data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) and Open Street Map to measure the distances of these bomb craters to hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The 2000 lb bombs, made by the American arms manufacturer General Dynamic and Ordinance Tactical System, have a blast radius that can kill people 360 m away from the point of detonation and can cause severe injury and damage building infrastructure 800 m away. Data analysis showed at least one bomb crater within 800 m of 83% percent of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and nine of those hospitals had 2000 lb bomb craters within 360 m. Most hospitals in Gaza had several bomb craters within dangerous proximity. 

During the time when this satellite imagery was captured, tens of thousands of civilians used these hospitals and their surrounding areas as places to seek refuge, all while the hospital system itself was losing capacity to treat the overwhelming number of casualties. This analysis raises serious concern for the violation of international humanitarian law. 

“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is an escalation amongst a litany of catastrophic events of a mass genocidal plan spanning decades. Almost a year bearing witness to an abhorrent imperialist violence, there is a total failure to comply with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings or normative framework of international law,” said Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health. “I continue my call on Israel and its allies to immediately ceasefire and end the occupation.” 

The analysis also found the Israeli military air-dropped over one hundred 2000 lb bombs in the officially designated evacuation zone for civilians. In the time span that this analysis covers, approximately 1 million people (about the population of Delaware) were estimated to have evacuated from the northern Gaza governorates to the southern governorates below the Wadi Gaza.

The article, titled “Are hospitals collateral damage? Assessing geospatial proximity of 2000 lb bomb detonations to hospital facilities in the Gaza Strip from October 7 to November 17, 2023” was published in the open access journal PLOS Global Public Health and is available here. 

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The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights is a collaboration between the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University, engaging in the study of Palestinian health through knowledge production, education, and multidisciplinary community engagement.  

The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB Center) is a university-wide Center at Harvard University. François-Xavier, son of the Center’s founder Albina du Boisrouvray, tragically lost his life while on a helicopter rescue mission in 1986. Endowing the Center in 1993 with the support of the FXB Foundation, Albina sought to perpetuate the values, generosity, and compassion that motivated François-Xavier, who strove especially to protect children. The Center is premised on the inextricable link between health and human rights, as advanced by founding director Jonathan Mann and strongly supported by then-Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvey Fineberg. The FXB Center champions the rights and dignity of every individual, with special attention to children, the most vulnerable. The FXB Center employs interdisciplinary approaches to such complex problems as poverty, forced migration, climate disruption, oppression, racism, bigotry, discrimination and inequity. By protecting fundamental human rights, the FXB Center aims ultimately to improve the physical, mental, and social well-being of individuals and populations. To learn more, please visit sites.harvard.edu/sph-fxb. 

Press Contact: Yara M. Asi, yasi@hsph.harvard.edu