The living stand next to the dead at Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa. In the images available of Thursday, November 9, the bodies, wrapped in simple sheets, are piled up in the hospital's courtyard. Alongside them, children, women and men who had fled the fighting took refuge under tents. All around them, the sounds of clashes between the Israeli army and Hamas are drawing nearer.

Suddenly, as shown in a video posted on Instagram, a shrill noise can be heard, and a projectile can be seen streaking across the night sky. The images, analyzed by Le Monde, show that the projectile came from somewhere north-northwest of the hospital.

Israeli illuminating shell found in rubble

Less than a second later, a loud and sharp sound of ground impact can be heard, outside of the video frame. It is followed by cries of horror and pain. The person filming moves toward these cries, and the footage shows a man holding his upper left leg – his limb has been almost completely severed. Thirty seconds later, a stretcher is brought to carry him.

The person filming then approaches a spent shell on the ground. Another man rolls it over with his foot, revealing several details that enabled Le Monde and several experts to identify it.

It has been identified as a fragment of the casing of a 155-mm caliber illuminating shell, which are used by the Israeli armed forces, an assessment confirmed by several weapons specialists. "It appears to be the body of a 155 mm illuminating shell, undoubtedly Israeli," explained Stéphane Audrand, international risk consultant, to whom Le Monde showed the available images. "The yellow color code corresponds to the body of [Israeli army] illuminating shells."

The main features of this fragment and those of this Israeli army's M485 A2 illuminating shell, which had previously been found and photographed by Amnesty International in the Gaza Strip in 2009, are identical. According to a weapons expert interviewed by Le Monde, the case of this illuminating shell weighs around 35 kilos. It can seriously injure or even kill a person at its point of impact, though it is not intended to cause major damage.

The Israeli army present nearby

On the day of this impact in the hospital courtyard, the Israeli army was present in Gaza, in line with the 155 mm illuminating shell's trajectory towards Al-Shifa, to the northwest. While no howitzers capable of firing such calibers are visible inside Gaza on the images currently available, some have been seen outside the Strip.

In a photo taken by Reuters on October 17 "near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip," Israeli 155mm M109 howitzers are clearly visible in firing positions. Near one of them, shells are lined up, ready to be fired. Twelve of them match the type of illuminating shell seen in the Al-Shifa footage.

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