Civil defence teams in Gaza documented over 2,800 cases of Palestinians who were ‘vaporised’ by US-made bombs
A Palestinian mourns those killed by an Israeli strike, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, south Gaza, on 4 December 2025 (AFP/Bashar Taleb)
By Mera Aladam
Published date: 10 February 2026 15:34 GMT | Last update:1 hour 43 mins ago
Israel used internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, leaving thousands of Palestinian bodies “evaporated” as a result, an investigation by Al Jazeera revealed.
Civil defence teams in Gaza documented over 2,800 cases of Palestinians who just vanished since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war, the Al Jazeera Arabic programme, The Rest of the Story, reported.
What is left of these bodies is only pieces of flesh, specks of blood or even ash.
Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel has obliterated most of the Gaza Strip, reducing entire neighbourhoods, including schools, businesses and medical facilities, to rubble.
Israeli soldiers and combat engineers have laid explosives and triggered controlled demolitions inside countless homes, while armoured bulldozers have systematically levelled building after building.
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More than mere explosives, experts and testimonies have attributed the vaporisation of people to Israel’s use of US-supplied thermal and thermobaric weapons, referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius (6,332 degrees Fahrenheit).
To put into perspective, the boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit).
The intense heat is often generated by tritonal, which is a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in American-made bombs.
Civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera that teams cross reference the known number of inhabitants in a house with the recovered bodies.
“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 explained.
The director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir al-Bursh, noted that it is “chemically inevitable” when a human body is exposed to high temperatures to “vaporise and turn to ash” as we are made up of 80 percent water.
The investigation identified several US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza, including the MK-84 “Hammer”, BLU-109 bunker buster, and GBU-39 small diameter bomb.
The BLU-109 bunker buster was reportedly used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel previously declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, evaporating 22 Palestinians.
Meanwhile the GBU-39 is said to have been used in an attack on al-Tabin school in eastern Gaza City. Basal confirmed finding fragments of the weaponry at sites where bodies had vanished.
In late November, Hamas called on an international committee to investigate Israel’s use of certain weapons, alleging that bodies are being “vaporised” in Gaza.
“The horrific testimonies provided by citizens and doctors in northern Gaza following the air strikes and massacres carried out against innocent civilians, and the confirmation of cases of targeting with weapons and ammunition that lead to the vaporisation of bodies strongly point to the use of internationally banned weapons by the terrorist occupation army,” the Palestinian movement said.
So far, Israel has killed more than 72,037 people and destroyed nearly 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure.
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