Gaza victims reveal horrific phosphorous burns

Rights groups say there is proof Israel used illegal weapon

CAIRO (Marwa Awad)

Israel's three-week assault on the Gaza Strip may have ended but the results of its bombardment still linger as victims raise fears that Israel might have used internationally banned weapons to attack Gaza, an accusation also made against the Jewish state during its 2006 aggression against Lebanon.

Ghadah Riyadh Juha, 20, lies in hospital bandaged from head to toe and barely able to speak because of her wounds, severe third-degree burns, which doctors at the burns unit of the Helmiya military hospital in Cairo say were caused by white phosphorus.

Gaza victim

Ghadah was in her husband’s house when three balls of fire fell through the roof into the living room, burning both her mother-in-law and father-in-law to death while burning her and her two-year-old daughter Farah on their head, arms, torso and legs.

“We were in the living room and then balls of fire rained down all of a sudden. By the time I made it out with my daughter and husband, I was completely burned as you can see and Farah too,” Ghadah whispered.

White phosphorus shells cause deadly burns

“Doctors say her burns go deep down to the bones,” Ghadah’s father Riyadh Juha, 57, told AlArabiya.net.

“We strongly suspect these burns are from white phosphorus because they are abnormally deep and go right down to the bone, damaging tissue in ways we have not seen before,” Dr. Abeer Osman from Helmiya hospital told AlArabiya.net.

Dr. Abeer Osman

One room down lay Ghadah’s two-year-old daughter Farah, who is also fully bandaged as deep burns covered most of her body. Doctors are at a loss to find any healthy skin on her required for the multiple skin grafts operations awaiting Farah.

“Farah is two years old and naturally her body is very small. Most of her body is burned and this makes it hard for doctors to find healthy skin for skin grafts,” Dr. Osman said.

Both Ghadah and Farah were taken to al-Arish hospital near Rafah once they crossed into Egypt four weeks ago. From there they were transported to Helmiya military hospital’s burns unit for intensive treatment.

“We are still at the stage of dressing and redressing their burns under general anaesthesia,” Osman said.

Multiple shell bursts

Amnesty International investigator

International human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Oxfam are accusing Israel of war crimes, saying that there is proof they used white phosphorus.

Israel's use of white phosphorus on civilian populations amounts to war crimes, Amnesty International's chief researcher for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Donatella Rovera told AlArabiya.net.

"The kind of weapons used and the manner in which they were used indicates prima facie evidence of war crimes," she said. “We found bits of white phosphorus shells in the areas we have conducted field research and those were densely populated areas,” Rovera, who also heads Amnesty International's investigation team in Gaza, said.

The only case phosphorus is allowed for use is to create a smokescreen

"We now know that white phosphorus munitions were used in built-up civilian areas, although the Israeli authorities previously denied this," Rovera told AlArabiya.net. "Now we have irrefutable evidence of the use of this weapon, but the doctors who treated the first casualties did not know what had caused their injuries."

An official report drawn from field research findings in Gaza will be submitted to the IDF for investigation and accountability, meaning the Jewish State will have to answer to the accusations against it, Rovera said.

Geneva Convention

Fred Abrahams--Human Rights Watch

Under international law, white phosphorus can be used as an obscurant or a smokescreen in open non-populated areas, a claim the IDF has made in response to accusations against it.

However its use on civilian populations constitutes war crimes under the Geneva Convention, says Human Rights Watch military analyst Marc Garlasco.

“The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life. This concern is amplified given the technique evidenced in media photographs of air-bursting white phosphorus projectiles,” Garlasco said in a Human Rights Watch report.

White phosphorus is a chemical weapon that needs oxygen to ignite, producing thick white smoke. It immediately burns anything it comes in contact with and keeps going until it reaches the bone, causing second and third degree burns.

Fact file on white phosphorus

“White phosphorus shells explode with contact with oxygen and then rain down on civilian populations,” Fred Abrahams Human Rights Watch (HRW) field researcher told AlArabiya.net.

Abrahams and Marc Garlasco, HRW military expert surveyed all the populated areas in the strip. They both say that white phosphorus shells have been used on civilians.

“From the north to the south of the strip in residential neighborhoods, we collected the actual shells of white phosphorus shells we found on the ground. We were looking at places where it was used in very highly populated areas where lots of civilians are,” Abrahams told AlArabiya.net.

Wounds still smoking

Dr. Nafiz Abu Shaaban

A burn specialist in Gaza told AlArabiya.net that early in the war, many victims had burns that continued to smoke hours after they were dressed and treated.

“I treated a case of a 5-year-old. Three hours after I removed foreign pieces of metal from her wound and dressed her burns and sent her for tests, the wound was still smoking,” Dr. Nafiz Abu Shaaban, head of burns unit at al-Shifaa hospital, told AlArabiya.net.

Foreign doctors and human rights workers who arrived after the war started told Dr. Abu Shaaban, who did not know the cause of the burns that the burns were from white phosphorus.

“We had no idea what was causing the smoke because it is nothing like what we have seen before,” he said, “then as the war went on, we had hundred of people from across the Strip with unusual burns.”

* This is Part III in a three part series on Gaza patients in Egypt. Part I examined the injuries and human toll of the war on Gazans being treated in Egyptian hospitals while Part II featured Egyptian volunteer networks visiting Gaza war victims.