ISTANBUL 

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) said Thursday that it has dropped “about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets” in Gaza since Saturday’s attack, which nearly matches the number of bombs the US used in Afghanistan in one year. 

The Washington Post, citing Marc Garlasco, a military adviser at the Dutch organization PAX for Peace, reported that Israel is “dropping in less than a week what the US was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified.”

Garlasco, who is also a former UN war crimes investigator in Libya, told the daily, citing records from the US Air Force Central Command, that the highest number of bombs dropped in a year for the war in Afghanistan was just over 7,423. According to the UN, during the entire war in Libya, NATO reported dropping more than 7,600 bombs and missiles from aircraft, the daily reported.

The number of Palestinians killed from Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip has risen to 1,537, the Health Ministry in Gaza announced Thursday. The statement noted that the dead included 500 children and 276 women, with 6,612 people injured.

Earlier on Thursday, the IAF said on X that “dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip.”

“So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets,” it added.

Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute, was also surprised by the figure.

WOW -- 6,000 bombs in 6 days, in 365 km2 #Gaza,” Lister said on X.

“For comparison, the international anti-#ISIS coalition dropped an average of ~2,500 bombs **per month, across 46,000 km2 in #Syria & #Iraq.**”