When we started shelling it was quite heavy, throughout each day. There were bombardments with phosphorous, which is a bomb that’s a smoke bomb and contains a certain type of phosphorous that burns for four minutes, and that's what we shot. It's felt cloth immersed in phosphorous, and then it scatters a bit and burns. That's what happened in "Cast Lead."

Why did you shoot the phosphorous smoke? Screening.

What does the phosphorous smoke do? It creates smoke for a long time, and in case our forces are in a difficult situation – [it] can save lives. But in a less fortunate case, it can also burn everything on the way, because there were phosphorous burns. It's not certain that anyone was killed from it, but there were phosphorous burns during that operation, for sure. [Other than that] there are regular explosive shells that include shrapnel. The [range] of immediate death [from them] is about 20 meters, maybe even a bit less. I didn't see whom we killed, but we killed. Many were killed, a lot.

How many shells did you fire? The whole artillery battery shot something like 2,500. When you don't see whom you're firing at, you don't mind shooting even 7,000 shells, because you don't always get the report on who was killed there and who wasn't.

Do you remember more shelling during the day or at night? All day long. You go to sleep and there's shelling, you wake up in the morning and they’re also shelling.

What’s the safety range of an explosive shell? It depends on the situation. If you're supporting [our forces] it can be very marginal. But if it’s a regular situation, often we would change targets just because they were close to houses during “Cast  Lead.” It's a statistical weapon. That means that if you shoot five shells, none of them will hit the same spot, and there will always be a deviation of some 20 meters. In order for it to be more precise you have to fire a few at once, and then you hit the target. That's the problem with this weapon, and that's why you're not allowed to use it in a place like Gaza, because you're certain to harm places you don't want to hit. Sometimes, in training, there was a deviation of a kilometer. How do you fix a deviation of a kilometer? It can hit a completely different place.