US resumes shipping of 500-pound bombs to Israel

Restating it’s support to the war on  Gaza, the United States has reportedly agreed to resume shipping of 500-pound bombs to Israel.

In May, Washington held back the shipping of 2,000-pound (900kg) and 500-pound (230kg) bombs fearing the impact of uncontrolled use of those weapons on the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltered.

The decision was made due to the widespread outrage of American citizens against the US government backing Israel’s genocidal onslaught in  Gaza.

According to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), which conducts defence policy research and analysis, a 500-pound bomb is capable of harming or killing everything or anyone within a 20-metre (65-foot) blast radius.

Meanwhile, a 2,000-pound bomb has a destruction radius of 35 metres (115 feet).

The consignment of 500-pound bombs was loaded with the shipment of the 2,000-pound bombs, due to which, the transfer of the smaller bombs to Israel was stalled.

However, the decision to supply arms will likely cause a rise in criticism against the Biden administration for its relentless support for Israel in its war on  Gaza.

While the US had paused the delivery of a single consignment of 2,000-pound bombs, Israel has continued to receive large supplies of different other varieties of US-made weaponry.

In June, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Washington of withholding weapons, Biden denied the former’s claim and declared his unwavering support to the Israeli military operations.

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on  Gaza in October, the US had shipped at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions, the Reuters reported.

The Palestinian death toll from the genocidal war has crossed 38,000, according to  Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Israel’s continuous bombarding of the enclave for the past nine months has left Gaza’s infrastructure in ruins and its populace in the worst kind of humanitarian crisis.

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