STORY: :: Gaza City, Gaza
OLIVIA: Reuters reporting has found that the Israeli army increasingly used a new and devastating weapon in the last months of the Gaza war, destroying buildings and some parts of neighborhoods in Gaza City.
:: Olivia Le Poidevin, Correspondent
:: Geneva, Switzerland
As Israel's military entered the city between August and October, aging Armoured Personnel Carriers, known as APCs, were packed with one to three tons of explosives and detonated, unleashing a blast two military experts said could be similar to the power of a 2,000-pound air-delivered bomb.
Two experts in the rules of war said that the use of this low-tech weapon - alongside widespread destruction that left parts uninhabitable - raised questions about whether Israel's tactics to remove booby traps and other threats complied with international law.
Israel's military told Reuters it respects the rules of war and took extensive measures to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.
:: Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Senior correspondent
:: Cairo, Egypt
NIDAL: Through our field reporting, satellite and video analysis, expert assessments and interviews, Reuters was able to build one of the most detailed independent pictures to date of how Israel's vehicle-based bombs contributed to widespread destruction in Gaza City in the final weeks before the ceasefire.
OLIVIA This is how our journalists documented the scale of destruction caused by these vehicle-based bombs - alongside air strikes and armoured bulldozers - in the months before the October ceasefire.
[ON SCREEN: Eyewitness accounts]
OLIVIA: It all started with Reuters' Gaza correspondent Nidal Al-Mughrabi receiving early reports around August from sources on the ground.
NIDAL: People were telling me about huge explosions happening in northern Gaza strip. They have described them as "earthquakes". In August Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was using Armoured Personnel Carriers, APCs, as explosive-based bombs in order to destroy houses Hamas rigged with explosives. Hamas denies the allegation and it describes Israel's tactic as collective punishment and war crime.
OLIVIA: Gaza's Civil defense authority said up to 20 of these bombs were being used each day in the densely-built-up Gaza City in the final few days before the ceasefire in October - spraying debris and shrapnel for hundreds of meters. Reuters was unable to confirm how many APCs Israel detonated.
NIDAL: As weeks went by, I spoke to a dozen of people in Gaza who told me they have seen military vehicles exploding, and causing damages to buildings.
[ON SCREEN: Gathering evidence]
OLIVIA: And so we started investigating.
NIDAL: Our TV crew on the ground filmed and documented widespread destruction of neighborhoods in Gaza City, including Tel al-Hawa and Sabra. They found and documented the remains of APCs strewn amid rubble - including twisted metal shrapnel, armoured plates and APC tracks blown off - for experts to review later.
[ON SCREEN: Satellite imagery]
:: Simon Scarr, Deputy global graphics editor
:: Singapore
SIMON: Satellite imagery was a critical part of our work and that's where the graphics team were able to really take a deeper look at some of the evidence. We used high-resolution commercial imagery to map the devastation across the various neighbourhoods.
We compared images taken on September 1 and October 11, giving us a clear picture of destruction across that six week window.
Building by building, we were able to document structures that were completely destroyed.
Though we couldn't always determine whether it was from an airstrike, APC explosion or by other means, we counted 650 buildings that were destroyed.
[ON SCREEN: Expert analysis]
OLIVIA: We showed our footage of exploded APC wreckage to two military experts. They examined how the metal had bent and also how heavy parts like tracks had been blasted off.
They said that in several locations the damage and debris were consistent with explosive-laden APCs detonating in or near residential areas.
A third expert helped us assess their power.
N.R. Jensen-Jones, Director of Armament Research Services (ARES):
"In a sort of fairly crude sense you can imagine that each ton is roughly comparable to the blast power of a large 2000-pound air delivered-bomb. So a three ton device is a very large blast indeed, and certainly capable of leveling a building."
SIMON: Experts also explained to us how an explosion would unfold, including potential blast radius and at what distances buildings could potentially be damaged.
Illustration also played a crucial role in our storytelling, allowing us to explain processes that we couldn't capture in real time on the ground.
[ON SCREEN: Understanding why]
:: Jonathan Saul, Senior correspondent
:: London, England
JONATHAN: My team and myself have been covering the war in Gaza for the last 18 months. We've spoken to a number of officials, Israeli security sources, the IDF, a military historian, in essence to try and unravel why precisely these craft have been used.
The APCs would come up to a building and then would be put in place and detonated remotely by Israeli military.
Israeli security sources see this as a much more efficient way of targeting buildings without massive loss of life, but also to protect their forces on the ground.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, saw this as just another example of maximum devastation which impacted upon their neighborhoods in Gaza.
OLIVIA: Reuters shared these findings with military and humanitarian law experts.
They expressed concern that the wide-area impact of these weapons--and the damage to civilian infrastructure, could make it difficult to uphold the principle of proportionality - a key tenet of international humanitarian law.
Civilian buildings could lose legal protection under humanitarian law and become targets if Israel had evidence Hamas used them for military advantage.
Israel's military did not respond to Reuters requests to provide such evidence.
The U.N. human rights office has highlighted what it described as wanton destruction aimed at making parts of Gaza uninhabitable.
The Israeli military told Reuters targets were reviewed before attacking, and that the weapons used were chosen to achieve the military objective while minimizing collateral damage.
Hamas told Reuters Israel's demolitions were aimed at population displacement, which Israel has denied.
