Did Israel Use “Cancer Bombs” in Recent Gaza Attack?
In the weeks following Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza, doctors treating the wounded began reporting something they said they hadn’t seen before: injuries that didn’t match the wound patterns typically caused by conventional explosives.
The unusual injuries have fueled speculation that Israeli forces used a class of weapon known as DIME — Dense Inert Metal Explosive — during the offensive. DIME weapons are designed to create a smaller, more concentrated blast radius than traditional explosives by packing their casings with a powdered tungsten alloy instead of standard shrapnel. Proponents have marketed the technology as a way to reduce unintended casualties in dense urban combat. But the powdered metal carries its own set of concerns.
A group of Italian scientists affiliated with the New Weapons Research Committee said this year that wounds caused by DIME munitions may be effectively untreatable, because the microscopic tungsten particles embedded in tissue cannot be removed surgically. Some researchers have also raised concern that tungsten and tungsten alloys may carry carcinogenic risk, based on findings from animal studies — the basis for the “cancer bomb” language now circulating among doctors and human rights monitors in Gaza.
Separately, the offensive has reignited longstanding claims that Israeli forces have used depleted uranium munitions in Gaza. Depleted uranium, a dense byproduct of uranium enrichment, is used by several militaries worldwide for its armor-penetrating capability, but has been linked by researchers to elevated cancer risk and birth defects in previously affected conflict zones, including Iraq.
The claims have drawn attention at the international level. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed this week that it will investigate complaints that Israel used depleted uranium projectiles during the Gaza offensive, following a formal letter of complaint submitted by Saudi Arabia’s ambassador. The World Health Organization is expected to take part in the inquiry as well.
Israel has denied using depleted uranium munitions in Gaza. The military has not directly addressed the specific DIME allegations, though it has faced separate, additional scrutiny this week over its use of white phosphorus munitions in populated areas — a weapon whose use Israel has acknowledged, while disputing characterizations of how and where it was deployed.
For doctors and researchers on the ground in Gaza, the priority now is documentation: tracking wound patterns, preserving fragments recovered from patients, and pushing for independent testing that could either substantiate or lay to rest the mounting concern that the offensive’s health consequences may extend far beyond its immediate casualties.