US to resume shipments of 500lb bombs to Israel

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The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel

The United States will resume shipments of 500lb bombs to Israel, a US official has told the BBC.

A joint shipment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs had been paused since May because of White House concerns over the use of the munitions in the crowded city of Rafah and other parts of Gaza.

The US has now clarified that the 500lb bombs had only been held up because they were “co-mingled” in the same shipment as the 2000lb bombs. The lower-impact 500lb bombs will now be “moving forward as part of the usual process”.

The planned resumption of bomb shipments comes as Israel presses ahead with military operations throughout the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, it dropped leaflets instructing “everyone” in Gaza City to go south to shelters in the Deir al-Balah area, warning that Gaza City remained a “dangerous combat zone”.

The paused weapons shipment had previously caused a diplomatic spat.

At a Senate hearing in May, US Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, announced the pause, saying: “We’ve been very clear… from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battle space.”

“As we have assessed the situation,” he said, “we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions.”

In June, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pushed back, publishing a video in which he criticised the US position, saying he had told US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, it was “inconceivable” that weapons and ammunition had been withheld “in the past few months”. —BBC