Staring straight ahead and rocking steadily backwards and forwards in
her hospital bed, Sabah Abu Halima lists the fate of each of her nine
children.

“Abed, 14 years old,
was decapitated,” she says. “Shaheed, one year and three months, was in
my arms when the fire took her…”

Sabah explains that her husband and four of her
children died when their house in northern Gaza was shelled during the
recent Israeli offensive.

Many of the rooms in that house now lay dark and empty – blackened by fire.

The light fittings and power sockets have melted down the walls.

A shaft of light coming from the ceiling of the corridor, and mangled steel, marks the entry point of one of the missiles.

Scrawled, in Arabic, on the wall of a bedroom is the statement: “From the Israeli Defence Forces, we are sorry.”

But on the next wall, there is a patch of white where, Sabah’s
20-year-old son Mahmoud tells us, had also been the words “nice
underwear”. He says he scrubbed them off in anger.

Hundreds were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive, but it is the
manner in which Sabah’s relatives lost their lives, and the weapon
used, that has attracted attention.

Sabah herself has suffered terrible burns on her arms, legs and torso and is considerable pain.

“There was fire, and so much white smoke,” she says. “The missile
melted my children. My daughter-in-law melted in front of my eyes.”

Dr Nafiz Abu Shabaan, the head of the unit in which
Sabah is being treated, says he has seen many victims with what he
described as “strange burns”.

“These burns were very severe, very deep, and became
deeper and wider over time,” he says. “In some cases, smoke came out of
the wound, even after hours.”

The cause of these types of injuries is believed, by
visiting medical officials, to be Israel’s use of shells containing
white phosphorus.

In another part of the city, at a former security compound flattened by
the Israeli bombardment, Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at
Human Rights Watch, points out evidence that white phosphorus had been
used.

“We’re standing here right next to an M825A1, which is the US designation for their white phosphorus shell,” he says.

“Manufactured in the US and sold to Israel, the shell here is
unexploded, although it’s cracked and you can see the phosphorus
pouring out in kind of this yellow-orange colour.”

“Around the area there are also some white phosphorus felt pieces,” he adds.

“As the weapon explodes in mid-air, 116 pieces of felt doused in white
phosphorus fall on a large area. These pieces are littered around here.
If you kicked them open, they would begin to smoke and potentially
reignite.”

Controversial as it is, white phosphorus is not illegal, at least in an
open battlefield setting, where it is used to mask troop movements, or
set on fire areas of high brush that need clearing.

But the international convention on the use of
incendiary weapons says it should not be used where there is a
possibility of hitting civilians.

The compound sticks to human skin and will burn right
through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful
wounds which are slow to heal.

United Nations officials say it was used in the
shelling of a school in which hundreds of civilians were taking refuge
from the fighting, and fired at the UN’s main headquarters in Gaza.

Eyewitnesses and victims talk of it being used on many other occasions in built-up areas.

After initially denying that white phosphorus shells were fired in
Gaza, some Israeli military officials have now acknowledged its use.

The army says it has started an internal investigation, the insistence
being until now that no weapons were used illegally.

Human rights groups have meanwhile started their own research.

“It’s important that we investigate the use of white phosphorus,
because it does appear that it was used incorrectly in a clear breach
of Geneva Conventions, ” says Mr Garlasco.

“But as grave as the injuries caused by white
phosphorus are, there are a number of weapons that were used in Gaza
that killed and injured an awful lot more people,” he adds.

“We have to look at the full variety of weapons that
were used here, how they were employed and how they impacted on the
civilian population.”