Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Israel - Gaza deaths not Israeli shelling:HRW

Human Rights Watch now says the deaths of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach was not due to Israeli shelling. They now agree the most likely cause was...

"We came to an agreement with General Klifi that the most likely cause [of the blast] was unexploded Israeli ordinance," Garlasco told The Jerusalem Post following the meeting.
Adloyada has the story.

It is not unusual for Palestinians to be killed trying to recover unexploded ordinance to be used against the Israelis or children playing with the devices. In fact, as noted in Wikipedia,

Another cause of injury has been unexploded ordinance (UXO). Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, at least 11 Palestinians under the age of 17 have been injured by Israeli security forces' munitions' remnants. The large majority of incidents involving unexploded ordinance occurred in the Gaza Strip.


The German Newspaper Sued Deutsche was one of the first to cast serious doubt on the Palestinian version of events.

Since the BBC uses Human Rights Watch extensively in thier reporting, it will be interesting to see if they report HRW's u-turn. As of this writing there is nothing on the BBC's website about it.

Interestingly, there is this damning report on the Palestinian's relentless rocket attack on Israel.

Last weekend, this small Israeli town close to the Gaza border was pounded by more than 50 Qassams - a crude home-made rocket - severely injuring a 61-year-old school caretaker.

The step-up in attacks came after the militant group Hamas broke its 16-month ceasefire after accusing Israeli forces of firing a shell onto a beach that killed eight Palestinian civilians.

But in the last few months the rockets have been falling in greater numbers.

According to the mayor of Sderot, Eli Moyal, an average of 80 rockets a month have landed in the town's municipal borders since September.

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