Video of Gaza market explosion shows lots of minor blasts before the big one

Last week, in the heavily trafficked Al-Zawiya market in Gaza City, there was a massive building explosion.

You can hear many smaller explosions before the huge blast at the 45 second mark.

It was apparently an Islamic Jihad  weapons depot, and the initial blasts were probably mortars or small rockets exploding before the fire reached a much larger cache of explosives.

In the past, Hamas weapons have also been known to explode in crowded markets, as the Jerusalem Post notes:

Palestinian writer Fadel Al-Manasfeh said it was clear that Hamas chooses popular markets as a safe place for its ammunition warehouses because it knows that Israel does not target such places. He also pointed out that a similar explosion took place in an open market in the Nuseirat refugee camp last year, killing more than 10 Palestinians and injuring dozens others.

It is another clear case of using human shields to protect rockets, a clear war crime. Outside some Palestinian NGOs, no human rights organizations mentioned this explosion - despite popular anger from Gazans at being used as pawns to shield weapons.

Arnold Roth noted bitterly that we are not likely to see photos of kids' toys sprinkled among the images of the leveled building the way they pop up when Israel bombs targets just like this. 

In fact, the international media barely mentioned this story. It doesn't have Jews to blame.

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