Yasmin Mahani walks through the smoking ruins at dawn on August 10, 2024 Tabin School Searching for her son Saad in Gaza City. She found her husband screaming, but Saad was nowhere to be seen.

“I walked into the mosque and found myself walking on flesh and blood,” Mahaney told Al Jazeera Arabic in an investigation broadcast on Monday. She searched for hospitals and morgues for days. “We found no trace of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

Mahani is one of thousands of Palestinians whose relatives have disappeared during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 people.

Since the start of the war in October 2023, Gaza civil defense teams have documented the “vaporization” of 2,842 Palestinians, leaving no remains other than blood stains or small fragments of flesh, according to Al Jazeera Arabic’s investigative The Rest of the Story.

Experts and witnesses attribute the phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally banned thermal and thermobaric weapons, commonly known as vacuum bombs or aerosol bombs, which are capable of generating temperatures in excess of 3,500 degrees Celsius (6,332 degrees Fahrenheit).

The chemistry of erasure

The investigation details how specific chemicals in Israeli munitions can turn a human body into ash in seconds.

Russian military expert Vasily Fatigarov explains that thermobaric weapons don’t just kill people; They obliterate matter. Unlike traditional explosives, these weapons spread a cloud of fuel that creates a massive fireball and vacuum effect when ignited.

“To extend the burning time, aluminum, magnesium and titanium powders are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the explosion temperature to 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celsius (4,532 to 5,432 degrees Fahrenheit).”

According to investigations, the product that generates intense heat is often Tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminum powder made in the United States. bomb Such as MK-84.

Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological effects of this extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of approximately 80% water.

“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius (212F),” al-Bursh said. “When the body is exposed to energy in excess of 3,000 degrees, combined with tremendous pressure and oxidation, the fluid immediately boils. The tissue evaporates and turns to ash. From a chemical perspective, this is inevitable.”

Anatomy of a Bomb

The investigation identified specific U.S.-made munitions used in Gaza in connection with these disappearances:

• MK-84 “Hammer”: The 900-kilogram (2,000-pound) unguided bomb was filled with trialdehyde and generated heat as high as 3,500 degrees Celsius (6,332 degrees Fahrenheit).
• BLU-109 Bunker Buster: In September 2024, the bomb vaporized 22 people during an attack on Mawasi, which Israel declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse that buries itself underground before detonating the PBXN-109 explosive mixture. This creates a huge fireball within the enclosed space, burning everything within reach.
• GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the Tarbin School attack. It uses AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the structure of the building relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills through pressure waves that rupture the lungs and heat waves that incinerate soft tissue.”

Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal confirmed that fragments of the GBU-39 wing were found at the location where the body disappeared. “We went to a targeted house and we knew there were five people inside,” Basal said. “We found three bodies. Two others simply disappeared. Often we just found blood on the scalp or on the wall.”

“Global genocide, not just Israel’s genocide”

Legal experts say the indiscriminate use of these weapons involves not only Israel but also its Western suppliers.

“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli genocide,” said lawyer Diana Butu, a lecturer at Georgetown University in Qatar.

Butu, speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, argued that supply chains were evidence of complicity. “We see a steady flow of these weapons coming from the United States and Europe. They know these weapons cannot differentiate between fighters and children, but they continue to send them anyway.”

Butu stressed that the use of weapons that cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants constitutes a war crime under international law.

“The whole world knows that Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons,” Butu said. “The question is why they were allowed to remain outside the accountability system.”

The breakdown of international justice

Despite the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice against Israel in January 2024, ordering it to prevent acts of genocide and arresting ensure The killings have intensified since the November 2024 ICC order against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tariq Chandab, a professor of international law, believes that the international justice system “has failed the Gaza test.”

“More than 600 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement (in October),” Chandab said. He stressed that the war continued through sieges, starvation and strikes. “The blockade of medicines and food is itself a crime against humanity.”

Schandab noted that the U.S. veto in the United Nations Security Council allowed Israel “impunity.” However, he noted that, given the political will, universal jurisdiction courts in countries such as Germany and France could provide another avenue for justice.

For Rafiq Badran, who lost four children in Brighi refugee camp during the war, these technical definitions mean little. He could only find a small portion of the children’s bodies to bury.

“My four children just evaporated,” Badran said, fighting back tears. “I’ve looked for them a million times. There’s not a piece left. Where did they go?”