Occupied Palestine – An Israeli airstrike on a warehouse storing agricultural and pharmaceutical products in Gaza amounted to the “indirect deploying of chemical weapons,” Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq said.
On the 15 May 2021, on the fifth day of the May 2021 offensive against Gaza, the Israeli occupation forces bombed the Khudair Pharmaceuticals and Agricultural Tools Company located in Beit Lahiya.
Al-Haq said that incendiary artillery shells fired by the IOF hit the Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools Warehouse and set fire to hundreds of tons of pesticides, plastics and other toxic substances, creating a huge plume that has caused local residents to struggle with health problems.
The Khudair Warehouse stores around 50 percent of all vital agricultural chemicals used in the besieged strip.
Al-Haq conducted an extensive investigation on the Israeli strike, which involved analyzing mobile phone and drone footage and CCTV, dozens of interviews with residents, and analysis from munitions and fluid dynamics experts, used 3D modelling of the warehouse to determine the circumstances of the attack.
It pointed out that the findings of the investigation reveal that the IOF illegally employed highly flammable munitions in a targeted attack on the warehouse, whose location and contents are known to Israel, setting on fire over 50 tons of hazardous chemicals stored on the site.
“The shelling of the warehouse, with knowledge of the presence of toxic chemicals stored therein, is tantamount to chemical weapons through indirect means. Such acts are clearly prohibited and prosecutable under the Rome Statute of the international criminal court,” it stressed.
The human rights NGO indicated that the investigation reveals that the shelling of the Khudair Warehouse was the first in an apparent series of collective punishment attacks by the IOF, deliberately targeting civilian economic infrastructure and the industrial sector.
