Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV

This photograph was taken in 2017 when a U.S. drone strike killed al Qaeda deputy leader Abu Khayr al-Masri riding in a car in Syria.

This photograph was taken two days ago in Gaza when an Israeli missile killed seven World Central Kitchen workers riding in a small convoy in Gaza.

Notice that the roofs of both vehicles have nearly identical holes in nearly the same location and that there is no other apparent damage to the vehicle. The windshield of the World Central Kitchen vehicle isn’t damaged. The windshield of the al Qaeda vehicle in Syria is cracked, but both vehicles still have their windshield wipers intact. The doors of both vehicles can still be opened.

Here is another view of the al Qaeda vehicle in Syria with the doors open and undamaged:

Here is a view of the World Central Kitchen vehicle in Gaza with its doors open, just after it was hit:

Notice there is very little damage to the doors of either vehicle, and yet everyone riding in both of them was killed immediately.

There is a very strong likelihood that the same sort of missile was used in both attacks. It is a modified version of the American Hellfire missile called the R9X. It does not carry an explosive warhead, but rather uses its 100 pound weight and the speed at which it is traveling to penetrate its target. Then it comes apart, deploying six steel blades that whirl around destroying and killing anything in their path. The nature of the blades allows them to penetrate soft material like cloth and flesh, while leaving the hard exterior of the vehicles nearly unscathed.

Here is an artist’s rendering of the R9X Hellfire missile showing how the blades are deployed:

The R9X was developed during the Obama administration for use in assassination strikes that take place in urban areas. The missile is able to kill everyone inside of a target vehicle without killing civilians in nearby vehicles or walking in the area.

In the case of the strike in Gaza, civilians working for World Central Kitchen were riding in the vehicle that was struck. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike in Gaza “unintentional” and said the incident will be “thoroughly investigated.” President Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the deaths of the aid workers and called upon Israel to “implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”

The New York Times reported this afternoon that the conversation between Biden and Netanyahu was “tense,” and said that “the White House stopped short of directly saying the president would halt arms supplies or impose conditions for their use, as fellow Democrats have urged him to do.”

The U.S. State Department approved the transfer of more than two thousand bombs to Israel on the day the aid workers were killed in Gaza. A report in the Washington Post said that the weapons included “over 1,000 small diameter bombs.” The modified Hellfire known as the R9X is a little over five feet long and has a diameter of just seven inches, which could put it in the category of the “small diameter bombs” that are approved for transfer to Israel.

According to a 2019 story in the Wall Street Journal, the R9X has been used by the Pentagon or the CIA only seven times in strikes on terrorist targets, including the strike on the al Qaeda leader in Syria in 2017 and a 2019 strike in Yemen on Jamal al-Badawi, the al Qaeda terrorist leader who planned the attack on the USS Cole.

Seven innocent civilians trying to bring food to starving civilians in Gaza were killed by this American weapon that was designed to assassinate terrorists. The damage done to both vehicles is too similar to be coincidental.

A weapon designed to minimalize civilian deaths has instead killed civilians working to feed helpless Palestinians in Gaza. The U.S. should instigate its own investigation of how this top-secret U.S. weapon evidently came to be in the Israeli arsenal for use in its war in Gaza and why there are no U.S. controls on its use by Israel’s military.