Tungsten from Mt Carbine mine far north Queensland has been co-opted by US manufacturer Elmet Technologies which manufacture tungsten cubes for fragmentation bombs made by Israeli weapons company Elbit systems. The tungsten is used to manufacture tiny cube shaped shrapnel for devastating injuries and death to Palestinian civilians, including countless children.
North Queensland people converge on Mt Carbine tungsten mine over US Department of Defence deal for war profits.
Monday 25th of November 2024 – MEDIA ALERT
On Saturday the 30th of November peace activists and groups from across Far North Queensland will converge on the Mt Carbine tungsten mine for a non-violent direct action and 15-minute silent peace vigil remembering the more than 15,000 Palestinian children killed in Gaza since October last year.
- What: World peace vigil – 15 minutes silence
- When: Saturday the 30th of November 4:30pm-5:30pm
- Where: EQ Resources Mt Carbine mine front gate on Mulligan Hwy
- Who: Peace activists and groups from across far north Queensland several of whom are available for interviews over the phone or on the day.
This convergence was inspired by a front-page story published in ‘The Express’, a local Mareeba newspaper on the 11th of September, titled ‘Mt Carbine tungsten deal critical to world security’.
Our action is intended to create more awareness in the local community and around the world about the origins of unethical products of war just like the tungsten exported from Mt Carbine. These products end up in the bodies of innocent civilians including children and used for maximum destruction of people’s homes and infrastructure in war crime atrocities such as those witnessed in Gaza by Israel.
The peace vigil is in response to the mine owner EQ Resources finalising a deal with the US Department of Defence in August that would secure these minerals ‘critical’ to weapons manufacturing and war profits for the life of the mine. The deal was done using the ‘US Defence Production Act (Title III)’ classifying Queensland minerals as a ‘US domestic source’. This enables the company to take advantage of grants and funding streams from the US government amounting to billions of dollars to expand the mine over the next decade with the US as exclusive customer, and under the guise of ‘world security’.
It is understood by participants that the mine provides local job opportunities and that ethical tungsten products do exist such as those used in medical, renewable technologies and aerospace industries. However, the issue we seek to highlight is that the majority are military applications that are fundamentally wrong and cannot be attributed to ‘world security’. They are designed to destroy ‘other’ human beings and property for war profits at the whim of American military might.
The wolfram ore concentrate from Mt Carbine will be sent to US tungsten and molybdenum fabricator Elmet technologies where it will be turned into warhead parts, tank parts and ‘tungsten cubes’ used to inflict horrific injuries on civilians including children in Gaza for well over a decade. The mysterious organ-shredding and bone-smashing cubes have been documented in reports by Amnesty International since 2009. Less than a week ago, on the 20th of November, Dr Mohammed Tahir an orthopaedic surgeon in Gaza found one of these 3mm tungsten shrapnel cubes that had penetrated his patient’s body causing permanent paralysis of his right arm.
In another recent case, on the 15th of November 2024, Australian citizen Ranem Abu Izneid studying dentistry near Jerusalem in a non-combat zone, had her dormitory shot to pieces by the Israeli Occupational Forces using what Dr Ameriah Fakhouri from the Palestinian Australian and New Zealand Medical Association (PANZMA) described as ‘a type of exploding bullet’. This bullet caused shrapnel to lodge in Ranem’s face, neck and chest causing her to lose her right eye. The investigation into this incident may find the shrapnel still lodged in Ranem’s face contains tungsten, as found in similar cases.
Our message at the world peace vigil will be clear – that the Mt Carbine mine is:
“Tungsten – source of American war profits, of warheads, tanks and shrapnel cubes, and of Israeli war crimes”.
Media contacts: Daniel Jones, Mount Molloy business owner 0472515962 Media contact: Alan Isherwood, Free Palestine Tablelands 0493 539 550 Media contact: Geoff Holland, Free Palestine Far North Queensland 0499658764
Guardian Article
Israeli weapons packed with shrapnel causing devastating injuries to children in Gaza, doctors
Chris McGreal Thu 11 Jul 2024 21.00 AEST
This article first appeared in the Guardian with research by Chris McGreal. We reprint it here as an organising tool. Please visit the original article for more pictures and advertising and such. And pay for the Guardian! It’s very helpful research
Surgeons who worked in European and al-Aqsa hospitals describe extensive wounds caused by ‘fragmentation’ shrapnel experts say is designed to maximize casualties.
Israeli-made weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel are causing horrific injuries to civilians in Gaza and disproportionately harming children, foreign surgeons who worked in the territory in recent months have told the Guardian.
The doctors say many of the deaths, amputations and life changing wounds to children they have treated came from the firing of missiles and shells – in areas crowded with civilians – packed with additional metal designed to fragment into tiny pieces of shrapnel.
Volunteer doctors at two Gaza hospitals said that a majority of their operations were on children hit by small pieces of shrapnel that leave barely discernible entry wounds but create extensive destruction inside the body. Amnesty International has said that the weapons appear designed to maximise casualties.
Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California, worked at the European hospital in southern Gaza in April.
“About half of the injuries I took care of were in young kids. We saw a lot of so-called splinter injuries that were very, very small to the point that you easily missed them while examining a patient. Much, much smaller than anything I’ve seen before but they caused tremendous damage on the inside,” he said.
Weapons experts said the shrapnel and wounds are consistent with Israeli-made weapons designed to create large numbers of casualties unlike more conventional weapons used to destroy buildings. The experts question why they are being fired into areas packed with civilians.
X-ray of the damage done to a 15-year-old’s leg by fragmentation shrapnel, some of which is still lodged in the bone. The surgeon said: “The shrapnel entered from the left into the tibia bone and exited through the fibula to the right of the image. Our word for very smashed bone is ‘comminuted’. Bone comminution does not get greater than this.” The surgeon has put in a stainless steel plate screwed into the tibia. Photograph: The Guardian
The Guardian spoke to six foreign doctors who have worked at two hospitals in Gaza, the European and al-Aqsa, in the last three months. All of them described encountering extensive wounds caused by “fragmentation” weapons, which they said have contributed to alarming rates of amputations since the war began. They said the injuries were seen in adults and children but that the damage done was likely to be more severe to younger bodies.
“Children are more vulnerable to any penetrating injury because they have smaller bodies. Their vital parts are smaller and easier to disrupt. When children have lacerated blood vessels, their blood vessels are already so small it’s very hard to put them back together. The artery that feeds the leg, the femoral artery, is only the thickness of a noodle in a small child. It’s very, very small. So repairing it and keeping the kid’s limb attached to them is very difficult,” Sidhwa said.
Mark Perlmutter, an orthopaedic surgeon from North Carolina, worked at the same hospital as Sidhwa.
“By far the most common wounds are one or two millimetre entry and exit wounds,” he said.
“X-rays showed demolished bones with a pinhole wound on one side, a pinhole on the other, and a bone that looks like a tractor trailer drove over it. The children we operated on, most of them had these small entrance and exit points.”
Perlmutter said children hit by multiple pieces of tiny shards often died and many of those who survived lost limbs.
“Most of the kids that survived had neurologic injuries and vascular injuries, a major cause of amputation. The blood vessels or the nerves get hit, and they come in a day later and the leg is dead or the arm is dead,” he said.
Sanjay Adusumilli, an Australian surgeon who worked at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza in April, recovered shrapnel made up of small metal cubes about three millimetres wide while operating on a young boy. He described wounds from fragmentation weapons distinguished by the shards of shrapnel destroying bone and organs while leaving just a scratch on the skin.
Explosives experts who reviewed pictures of the shrapnel and the doctors’ descriptions of the wounds said they were consistent with bombs and shells fitted with a “fragmentation sleeve” around the explosive warhead in order to maximise casualties. Their use has also been documented in past Israeli offensives in Gaza.
Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said the explosive sprays out tungsten cubes and ball bearings that are far more lethal than the blast itself.
“These balls and cubes are the main fragmentation effect from these munitions, with the munition casing providing a much smaller portion of the fragmentation effect. Most traditional artillery rounds and bombs rely on the munition casing itself rather than added fragmentation liners,” he said.
Cubes removed from a child by Sanjay Adusumilli, an Australian surgeon working at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian
Ball said the metal cubes recovered by Adusumilli are typically found in Israeli-made weapons such as certain types of Spike missiles fired from drones. He said the doctors’ accounts of tiny entry wounds are also consistent with glide bombs and tank rounds fitted with fragmentation sleeves such as the M329 APAM shell, which is designed to penetrate buildings, and the M339 round which its manufacturer, Elbit Systems of Haifa, describes as “highly lethal against dismounted infantry”.
Some of the weapons are designed to penetrate buildings and kill everyone within the walls. But when they are dropped onto streets or among tents, there is no such containment.
“The issue comes with how these small munitions are being employed,” said Ball. “Even a relatively small munition employed in a crowded space, especially a space with little to no protection against fragmentation, such as a refugee camp with tents, can lead to significant deaths and injuries.”
Amnesty International first identified ammunition packed with the metal cubes used in Spike missiles in Gaza in 2009.
“They appear designed to cause maximum injury and, in some respects, seem to be a more sophisticated version of the ball-bearings or nails and bolts which armed groups often pack into crude rockets and suicide bombs,” Amnesty said in a report at the time.
Ball said that weapons fitted with fragmentation sleeves are “relatively small munitions” compared with the bombs that have a wide blast area and have damaged or destroyed more than half the buildings in Gaza. But because they are packed with additional metal, they are very deadly in the immediate vicinity. The shrapnel from a Spike missile typically kills and severely wounds over a 20-metre (65-ft) radius.
Another weapons expert, who declined to be named because he sometimes works for the US government, questioned the use of such weapons in areas of Gaza crowded with civilians.
“The claim is that these weapons are more precise and limit casualties to a smaller area. But when they are fired into areas with high concentrations of civilians living in the open with nowhere to shelter, the military knows that most of the casualties will be those civilians,” he said.
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In response to questions about the use of fragmentation weapons in areas with concentrations of civilians, the Israel Defense Forces said that military commanders are required “to consider the various means of warfare that are equally capable of achieving a defined military objective, and to choose the means that is expected to cause the least incidental damage under the circumstances.
“The IDF makes various efforts to reduce harm to civilians to the extent feasible in the operational circumstances ruling at the time of the strike,” it said.
“The IDF reviews targets before strikes and chooses the proper munition in accordance with operational and humanitarian considerations, taking into account an assessment of the relevant structural and geographical features of the target, the target’s environment, possible effects on nearby civilians, critical infrastructure in the vicinity, and more.”
The UN children’s agency, Unicef has said that “staggering” numbers of children have been wounded in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The United Nations estimates that Israel has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza in the present war of which at least 8,000 are confirmed to be children, although the actual figure is likely to be much higher. Tens of thousands have been wounded.
In June, the UN added Israel to a list of states committing violations against children during conflict, describing the scale of killing in Gaza as “an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children”, principally by Israeli forces.
Many of the cases recalled by the surgeons involved children severely injured when missiles landed in or near areas where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in tents after being driven from their homes by the Israeli assault.
An X-ray of a man with tiny pieces of shrapnel (the white specks) in his body. Photograph: The Guardian
Perlmutter described repeatedly encountering similar wounds.
“Most of our patients were under 16,” he said. “The exit wound is only a couple millimetres big. The entrance wound is that big or smaller. But you can see it is extremely high velocity because of the damage it does on the inside. When you have multiple small fragments travelling at insane speeds, it does soft tissue damage that far outweighs the size of the fragment.”
Adusumilli described treating a six-year-old boy who arrived at the hospital after an Israeli missile strike close to the tent where his family was living after fleeing their home under Israeli bombardment. The surgeon said the child had pinhole wounds that gave no indication of the scale of the damage beneath the skin.
“I had to open his abdomen and chest. He had lacerations to his lung, to his heart, and holes throughout his intestine. We had to repair everything. He was lucky that there was a bed in the intensive care unit. But, despite that, that young boy died two days later,” he said.
An American emergency room doctor now working in central Gaza, who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardising his work there, said that medics continue to treat deeply penetrating wounds created by fragmentation shards. The doctor said he had just worked on a child who suffered wounds to his heart and major blood vessels, and a build up of blood between his ribs and lungs that made it difficult to breathe.
Sidhwa said that “about half of the patients that we took care of were children”. He kept notes on several, including a nine year-old girl, Jouri, who was severely injured by shards of shrapnel in an air strike on Rafah.
“We found Jouri dying of sepsis in a corner. We took her to the operating room and found that both of her buttocks had been completely flayed open. The lowest bone in her pelvis was actually exposed to the skin. These wounds were covered in maggots. Her left leg she was missing a big chunk of the the muscles on the front and back of the leg, and then about two inches of her femur. The bone in the leg was just gone,” he said.
Sidhwa said doctors were able to save Jouri’s life and treat septic shock. But in order to save what remained of her leg, the surgeons shortened it during repeated operations.
The problem, said Sidhwa, is that Jouri will need constant care for years to come and she’s unlikely to find it in Gaza.
“She needs advanced surgical intervention every one to two years years as she grows to bring her left femur back to the length it needs to be to match her right leg, otherwise walking will be impossible,” he said.
“If she does not get out of Gaza, if she survives at all, she will be permanently and completely crippled.”
Adusumilli said fragmentation weapons resulted in high numbers of amputations among children who survived.
“It was unbelievable the number of amputations we had to do, especially on children, he said. “The option you’ve got to save their life is to amputate their leg or their hands or their arms. It was a constant flow of amputations every day.”
Adusumilli operated on a seven year-old girl who was hit by shrapnel from a missile that landed near her family’s tent.
A 15-year-old malnourished boy with a pinhole wound in the middle of his chest. Photograph: The Guardian
“She came in with her left arm completely blown off. Her family brought the arm in wrapped in a towel and in a bag. She had shrapnel injuries to her abdomen so I had to open up her abdomen and control the bleeding. She ended up having her left arm amputated,” he said.
“She survived but the reason I remember her is because as I was rushing into the operating theatre, she reminded me of my own daughter and it sort of it was very difficult to accept emotionally.”
Unicef estimated that in the first 10 weeks of the conflict alone about 1,000 children lost one or both of their legs to amputations.
The doctors said that many of the limbs could be saved in more normal circumstances but that shortages of medicines and operating theatres limited surgeons to carrying out emergency procedures to save lives. Some children endured amputations without anaesthetic or painkillers afterwards which hindered their recovery alongside the challenges of rampant infections because of unsanitary conditions and lack of antibiotics.
Adusumilli said that, as a result, some children saved on the operating table died later when they could have been saved in different conditions.
“The sad part is that you do what you can to try and help these kids. But at the end of the day, the fact that the hospital is so overcrowded and doesn’t have the resources in intensive care, they just end up dying later on.”
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EQ Resources Ltd
CODE OF CONDUCT
5.2. Good Corporate Citizenship
5.2.1. The Company recognizes that it operates in an environment which impacts on various interests in the community. In pursuing corporate responsibility, the Company will:
(a) always consider the environmental, sociological and economic impacts of our operations;
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Doctor operating in Gaza finds ‘tungsten cube’ used in Israeli explosive weapons
22 Nov 2024
Dr Mohammad Tahir, a London-based orthopaedic and peripheral nerve surgeon on a medical mission in Gaza, said he found a small tungsten cube “designed to explode and cause maximum damage” while operating on a Palestinian man injured by an Israeli explosive weapon.
The small cube had severed a nerve in the victim’s arm, causing likely permanent paralysis, according to Dr Tahir.
An unidentified weapon packed with unusual “cube-shaped shrapnel” has killed or wounded Palestinian civilians in the Gaza war, according to an Amnesty International report from February.
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