23 mrt 2009
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Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard
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Gaza war crimes investigation: attacks on medics
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'Very strong evidence' of Israel being Guilty of "War Crimes & probably also Crimes against Humanity" "many serious violations of International Law " (U.N. Judge Goldstone & 3 other top Judges) in their Christmas 2008-2009 Attack. Some of the Kids Murdered by Israel some by 2 Sniper shots to chest-head etc.
Obscene US $ handed to Israel Whilst American Families are facing Evictions & Dying for lack of proper & free Healthcare like we have in England & Europe.
His team spent 3 Months looking at evidence, homes and hundreds of Children killed some shot dead at point blank range and more blinded and Maimed Civilians killed and hit with ILLEGAL U.S. supplied (A.T.K. Aerospace) 155mm Artillery White Phosphorous shells
f16 strikes and remote Drone launched missiles (which use grainy video) to 'identify' possible targets, people were killed drinking tea in their yards and a Mosque filled with 150 Worshippers was hit with no Military value other than to inflict great loss of life!.
terrible maiming s of hundreds of Children Adult such as blinding and loss of limbs.
See 2yr-4yr girls &-9-10-14year old Kids burnt and crippled for life and shot in the head deliberately by IDF snipers video nr 1
Obscene US $ handed to Israel Whilst American Families are facing Evictions & Dying for lack of proper & free Healthcare like we have in England & Europe.
His team spent 3 Months looking at evidence, homes and hundreds of Children killed some shot dead at point blank range and more blinded and Maimed Civilians killed and hit with ILLEGAL U.S. supplied (A.T.K. Aerospace) 155mm Artillery White Phosphorous shells
f16 strikes and remote Drone launched missiles (which use grainy video) to 'identify' possible targets, people were killed drinking tea in their yards and a Mosque filled with 150 Worshippers was hit with no Military value other than to inflict great loss of life!.
terrible maiming s of hundreds of Children Adult such as blinding and loss of limbs.
See 2yr-4yr girls &-9-10-14year old Kids burnt and crippled for life and shot in the head deliberately by IDF snipers video nr 1
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Video nr 1
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Video nr 2
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Incidentally Richard Goldstone freely admits he is Jewish and (generally) is a supporter of Israel Independance!. Video nr 2
Talks of US critism of his teams conclusion
After breakaway Palestinian groups had launched many homemade rockets and damaged property & killed & injured a some Israeli Citizens (also potentially War Crime), Israeli Forces engaged in their huge 'Offensive' killing 1460 people 95+% innocent Civilians,(Israel had 10 Military Fatalities in this offensive!)
In U.K. we saw the videos of them using airburst White Phosphorous shells on Gaza inner city areas, an evil anti personnel weapon BANNED by the Geneva convention which keeps burning through tissue bone limb etc forcing immediate amputation (or a certain agonizing Death) of any Woman Child Person it lands on.
Grainy Drone images that decide life or death of innocent Civilians, anyone loading a works lorry or going into a Mosque to pray were targetted, as one IDF Soldier stated in an interview (i quote)"make sure the mistakes are on their Body count not ours".
Talks of US critism of his teams conclusion
After breakaway Palestinian groups had launched many homemade rockets and damaged property & killed & injured a some Israeli Citizens (also potentially War Crime), Israeli Forces engaged in their huge 'Offensive' killing 1460 people 95+% innocent Civilians,(Israel had 10 Military Fatalities in this offensive!)
In U.K. we saw the videos of them using airburst White Phosphorous shells on Gaza inner city areas, an evil anti personnel weapon BANNED by the Geneva convention which keeps burning through tissue bone limb etc forcing immediate amputation (or a certain agonizing Death) of any Woman Child Person it lands on.
Grainy Drone images that decide life or death of innocent Civilians, anyone loading a works lorry or going into a Mosque to pray were targetted, as one IDF Soldier stated in an interview (i quote)"make sure the mistakes are on their Body count not ours".
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Also found guilty of Political oppression and mal treatment of Prisoners. The "NEW Nazi's of modern times?.
Palestinian family Family shot (idf film).
Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles – the dreaded drones – caused at least 48 deaths in Gaza during the 23-day offensive
Mounir al-Jarah slowly takes down the bricks he used to wall up the entrance to his sister's courtyard. Inside, flesh still clings to the walls; blood-soaked furniture and family items lie broken and mangled.
Mounir's eyes search around the old house as he recounts the events of 16 January, when a rocket fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle killed his sister, her husband and four of her children.
Sitting around drinking tea with the family in their small courtyard, Mounir heard the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone, clearly visible in the sky above.
He went inside for a moment and, as he returned, he saw a ball of light hurtling down toward him. There was a loud explosion and he was thrown backward. He gathered himself and stumbled out into the courtyard, where he saw the scene he says will never leave him.
"We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt – his eyes were gone. Wahid's father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn't see her head anywhere."
All six members of the family had been blown to pieces, coating each wall of the narrow enclosure with blood and body matter.
"You cannot imagine the scene: a family all sitting around together and then, in a matter of seconds, they were cut to pieces. Even the next day we found limbs and body parts on the roof, feet and hands," Mounir says.
Fatheya, 17, is one of the few surviving members of the family. Slipping further into grief-stricken madness, flitting from one horrific description to the next, she says: "There were rocks and dust and fire … It's very difficult … I can't, no matter how I try to explain my situation to you, picking up the pieces of my dead family … I couldn't handle it, limbs and flesh all around me. What have we done to deserve this?"
The attack on this home in Gaza City is just one of more than a dozen incidents recorded by Amnesty International where Israel's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – or drones – killed one or more civilians.
During the 23-day offensive, 1,380 Palestinians perished, 431 of them children, according to figures published by the World Health Organisation.
A Guardian investigation into the high number of civilian deaths has found Israel used a variety of weapons in illegal ways. Indiscriminate munitions, including shells packed with white phosphorus, were fired into densely populated areas, while precision missiles and tanks shells were fired into civilian homes.
But it is the use of drones in the killing of at least 48 civilians that appears most reprehensible.
The drones are operated from a remote position, usually outside the combat zone. They use optics that are able to see the details of a man's clothing and are fitted with pinpoint accurate missiles.
Yet they killed Mounir's family sitting in their courtyard, a group of girls and women in an empty street, two small children in a field, and many others.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a senior military analyst in Gaza to advise Amnesty in its investigation, is at a loss to explain how these killings occurred.
"With a weapons system that is so accurate, and with such good optics, why are we experiencing so many civilians being killed? There should be no excuse for these numbers," he said.
The Guardian asked the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) about their use of armed drones but they declined to be interviewed on the subject. Instead they issued a written statement: "The IDF operated in accordance with the rules of war and did the utmost to minimise harm to civilians uninvolved in combat. The IDF's use of weapons conforms to international law."
Israel still refuses to confirm whether it is using armed drones over Gaza but, in the online version of an Israeli army magazine, Major Gil, the deputy commander of the first UAV squadron, describes using the drones to carry out attacks during this offensive.
"We were able to monitor each of the soldiers at any minute and identify any threats to them," he said.
He also describes being able to clearly distinguish fighters from women and children and other civilians: "When there were innocent people around, we would wait for the terrorist to leave the child and then hit him," he said.
Lieutenant Tal, an operator and intelligence officer in the UAV squadron, describes the details the drone cameras can see.
"We identified a terrorist that looked like an Israeli soldier. Our camera enabled us to see him very clearly. He was wearing a green parka jacket and was walking around with a huge radio that looked exactly like an army radio. It was very clear he wasn't a soldier."
According to Robert Hewson of Jane's Defence Weekly, who has been monitoring armed drones and their role in assassinations in the occupied territories since 2004, most of Israel's armed drones use a modified anti-tank weapon called a mikholit ("paintbrush" in Hebrew) that delivers a small but intense explosion like the one in Mounir's courtyard.
Teams of human rights investigators and international law experts are now building the case for war crimes charges against Israel and trying to decipher why so many innocents were killed in this offensive.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz discovered that the IDF's international law division (ILD,) the body responsible for advising Israeli forces on the legality of their actions, had authorised an easing of the rules of engagement in Gaza.
A copy of the rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead was obtained by Ha'aretz in the days before the offensive began. According to a journalist who saw the document, the new, less stringent rules were approved at the highest levels of the Israeli military.
Ha'aretz was repeatedly blocked from publishing the document by the military censor.
In recent days, striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the Gaza fighting, in which they described the shooting of civilians and the low regard held among the troops for Palestinians.
The soldiers, all graduates of the same Israeli college, gave their testimony in a session in mid-February. It was published last week in the college newsletter, forcing the Israeli military to announce another investigation into the conduct of the war.
In one of the worst cases, a soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her two children. He said the soldiers around him believed the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".
Another soldier said a company commander had given orders to shoot an elderly Palestinian woman who was walking on a road about 100m from a house the soldiers had taken over. Others talked about the influence of military rabbis and the sense among soldiers that they were fighting a "religious war".
Some efforts to explain the large number of civilian deaths have focused on the aggressive conduct of the war by Israel. But other explanations look at a broader shift in military philosophy.
The former head of the ILD, Colonel Daniel Reisner, spoke frankly to the Israeli media in the aftermath about the role the body plays in pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in war.
"What we are seeing now is a revision of international law," Reisner said. "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.
"International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it."
The United Nations human rights council is preparing to launch an inquiry into allegations that Israel committed war crimes during its offensive against Gaza. Israel has already dismissed the inquiry, accusing the UN of bias. It says Palestinian fighters committed war crimes by firing mostly crude homemade rockets into civilian areas.
Amnesty International says Palestinian militants should be prosecuted for war crimes, but insists the vast majority of offences were committed by Israel. "Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure Israel's cooperation and it's the only body that can secure some kind of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in Gaza investigating war crimes allegations.
"Without a proper investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'Its okay to do these things, there wont be any real consequences'."
Palestinian family Family shot (idf film).
Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles – the dreaded drones – caused at least 48 deaths in Gaza during the 23-day offensive
Mounir al-Jarah slowly takes down the bricks he used to wall up the entrance to his sister's courtyard. Inside, flesh still clings to the walls; blood-soaked furniture and family items lie broken and mangled.
Mounir's eyes search around the old house as he recounts the events of 16 January, when a rocket fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle killed his sister, her husband and four of her children.
Sitting around drinking tea with the family in their small courtyard, Mounir heard the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone, clearly visible in the sky above.
He went inside for a moment and, as he returned, he saw a ball of light hurtling down toward him. There was a loud explosion and he was thrown backward. He gathered himself and stumbled out into the courtyard, where he saw the scene he says will never leave him.
"We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt – his eyes were gone. Wahid's father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn't see her head anywhere."
All six members of the family had been blown to pieces, coating each wall of the narrow enclosure with blood and body matter.
"You cannot imagine the scene: a family all sitting around together and then, in a matter of seconds, they were cut to pieces. Even the next day we found limbs and body parts on the roof, feet and hands," Mounir says.
Fatheya, 17, is one of the few surviving members of the family. Slipping further into grief-stricken madness, flitting from one horrific description to the next, she says: "There were rocks and dust and fire … It's very difficult … I can't, no matter how I try to explain my situation to you, picking up the pieces of my dead family … I couldn't handle it, limbs and flesh all around me. What have we done to deserve this?"
The attack on this home in Gaza City is just one of more than a dozen incidents recorded by Amnesty International where Israel's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – or drones – killed one or more civilians.
During the 23-day offensive, 1,380 Palestinians perished, 431 of them children, according to figures published by the World Health Organisation.
A Guardian investigation into the high number of civilian deaths has found Israel used a variety of weapons in illegal ways. Indiscriminate munitions, including shells packed with white phosphorus, were fired into densely populated areas, while precision missiles and tanks shells were fired into civilian homes.
But it is the use of drones in the killing of at least 48 civilians that appears most reprehensible.
The drones are operated from a remote position, usually outside the combat zone. They use optics that are able to see the details of a man's clothing and are fitted with pinpoint accurate missiles.
Yet they killed Mounir's family sitting in their courtyard, a group of girls and women in an empty street, two small children in a field, and many others.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a senior military analyst in Gaza to advise Amnesty in its investigation, is at a loss to explain how these killings occurred.
"With a weapons system that is so accurate, and with such good optics, why are we experiencing so many civilians being killed? There should be no excuse for these numbers," he said.
The Guardian asked the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) about their use of armed drones but they declined to be interviewed on the subject. Instead they issued a written statement: "The IDF operated in accordance with the rules of war and did the utmost to minimise harm to civilians uninvolved in combat. The IDF's use of weapons conforms to international law."
Israel still refuses to confirm whether it is using armed drones over Gaza but, in the online version of an Israeli army magazine, Major Gil, the deputy commander of the first UAV squadron, describes using the drones to carry out attacks during this offensive.
"We were able to monitor each of the soldiers at any minute and identify any threats to them," he said.
He also describes being able to clearly distinguish fighters from women and children and other civilians: "When there were innocent people around, we would wait for the terrorist to leave the child and then hit him," he said.
Lieutenant Tal, an operator and intelligence officer in the UAV squadron, describes the details the drone cameras can see.
"We identified a terrorist that looked like an Israeli soldier. Our camera enabled us to see him very clearly. He was wearing a green parka jacket and was walking around with a huge radio that looked exactly like an army radio. It was very clear he wasn't a soldier."
According to Robert Hewson of Jane's Defence Weekly, who has been monitoring armed drones and their role in assassinations in the occupied territories since 2004, most of Israel's armed drones use a modified anti-tank weapon called a mikholit ("paintbrush" in Hebrew) that delivers a small but intense explosion like the one in Mounir's courtyard.
Teams of human rights investigators and international law experts are now building the case for war crimes charges against Israel and trying to decipher why so many innocents were killed in this offensive.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz discovered that the IDF's international law division (ILD,) the body responsible for advising Israeli forces on the legality of their actions, had authorised an easing of the rules of engagement in Gaza.
A copy of the rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead was obtained by Ha'aretz in the days before the offensive began. According to a journalist who saw the document, the new, less stringent rules were approved at the highest levels of the Israeli military.
Ha'aretz was repeatedly blocked from publishing the document by the military censor.
In recent days, striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the Gaza fighting, in which they described the shooting of civilians and the low regard held among the troops for Palestinians.
The soldiers, all graduates of the same Israeli college, gave their testimony in a session in mid-February. It was published last week in the college newsletter, forcing the Israeli military to announce another investigation into the conduct of the war.
In one of the worst cases, a soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her two children. He said the soldiers around him believed the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".
Another soldier said a company commander had given orders to shoot an elderly Palestinian woman who was walking on a road about 100m from a house the soldiers had taken over. Others talked about the influence of military rabbis and the sense among soldiers that they were fighting a "religious war".
Some efforts to explain the large number of civilian deaths have focused on the aggressive conduct of the war by Israel. But other explanations look at a broader shift in military philosophy.
The former head of the ILD, Colonel Daniel Reisner, spoke frankly to the Israeli media in the aftermath about the role the body plays in pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in war.
"What we are seeing now is a revision of international law," Reisner said. "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.
"International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it."
The United Nations human rights council is preparing to launch an inquiry into allegations that Israel committed war crimes during its offensive against Gaza. Israel has already dismissed the inquiry, accusing the UN of bias. It says Palestinian fighters committed war crimes by firing mostly crude homemade rockets into civilian areas.
Amnesty International says Palestinian militants should be prosecuted for war crimes, but insists the vast majority of offences were committed by Israel. "Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure Israel's cooperation and it's the only body that can secure some kind of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in Gaza investigating war crimes allegations.
"Without a proper investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'Its okay to do these things, there wont be any real consequences'."
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NAM wants action on Israel chemical weapons use
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has condemned the use of "chemical weapons" by Israel in its recent operations against the Gaza Strip. The NAM condemnation came after Tel Aviv was charged with the use of the controversial white phosphorous -- also known by the military as WP or Willie Pete -- shells during its recent three-week-war on the Gaza Strip. White phosphorus, classified as a chemical weapon by US intelligence, is used in munitions, to mark enemy targets and to produce smoke for concealing troop movement. It can also be used as an incendiary device to firebomb enemy positions. |
If particles of ignited white phosphorus land on a person's skin, they burn right through flesh to the bone. Toxic phosphoric acid can also be released into wounds, risking phosphorus poisoning.
Exposure to white phosphorus smoke in the air can also cause liver, kidney, heart, lung and bone damage and can even lead to death.
In a statement issued on Thursday at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the 114-member group called on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) "to do its duty in this regard" and to help the Gazan victims of the Israeli aggression.
Addressing the conference, Geneva-based Iranian diplomat Ali-Reza Moayyeri urged the global community and the OPCW to launch an investigation into the use of illegal weapons by Israel in Gaza.
He further called on international organizations to step up pressure on Israel to halt its "weapons of mass destruction program".
International organizations and human rights groups continue to voice concern over Tel Aviv's use of forbidden arms, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorus, in the war on Gaza which has resulted in the deaths of at least 1,330 Palestinians and the injury of thousands of others.
Exposure to white phosphorus smoke in the air can also cause liver, kidney, heart, lung and bone damage and can even lead to death.
In a statement issued on Thursday at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the 114-member group called on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) "to do its duty in this regard" and to help the Gazan victims of the Israeli aggression.
Addressing the conference, Geneva-based Iranian diplomat Ali-Reza Moayyeri urged the global community and the OPCW to launch an investigation into the use of illegal weapons by Israel in Gaza.
He further called on international organizations to step up pressure on Israel to halt its "weapons of mass destruction program".
International organizations and human rights groups continue to voice concern over Tel Aviv's use of forbidden arms, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorus, in the war on Gaza which has resulted in the deaths of at least 1,330 Palestinians and the injury of thousands of others.
9 febr 2009
Israeli army 'used human shields in Gaza war'
Israeli army 'used human shields in Gaza war'
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While Israel is going to the polls, the story of how their army conducted its war on Gaza is slowly being pieced together.
Two Gaza residents have told al Jazeera that they were used as human shields by the army - a military tactic that is specifically forbidden by Israeli law. The Israeli army denies the allegations. |
1 febr 2009
Faulty intelligence, wanton recklessness, or a combination of the two [PDF]
-- A 13-year-old girl who was asleep in her bed;
-- three primary school-age boys who were carrying sugar canes;
-- two young women on their way to a shelter in search of safety;
-- a 13-year-old boy on his bicycle;
-- eight secondary school students who were waiting for the school bus to take them home;
-- an entire family sitting outside their home –
these are among the many victims of missiles fired from Israeli UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), commonly known as drones.
Here in Gaza people call the drones “zannana”, an onomatopoeic description reflecting the buzzing sound that they emit as they fly overhead. Their main function is surveillance, but, in recent years, Israeli forces have also used them to fire missiles, often to assassinate “wanted” Palestinians.
An Israeli journalist told us that the military censor does not permit Israeli media to publish any reference to strikes by drones. These missiles seem to be very precise, with a relatively small but concentrated radius.
Yet, they have killed or injured hundreds of civilians, including many children, though the reason for this – whether due to faulty intelligence, wanton recklessness, or a combination of the two – is unclear.
In many of the cases we investigated, we found a consistent pattern: each missile is packed with tiny metal cubes that increase its lethal effect. These are blasted with extreme force, penetrating through metal doors and steel pylons and embedding deep into concrete walls.
Today, we visited the place where a missile fired from a drone killed two women and three children from the same family on the morning of 15 January. It was in a Bedouin village on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, in north Gaza. Those killed were three children, their mother and their grandmother.
The family’s home had been destroyed some 10 days earlier by the blast from a powerful air strike that apparently targeted a nearby tunnel. After this, the family had gone to stay with relatives across the road. The two women and three children were killed by the missile when they returned to the remains of their home to retrieve some of their possessions.
Earlier, we investigated several other cases in the Khan Yunis area, in the south of the Gaza Strip. There, the latest drone attack had occurred on 29 January, despite the 11-day-old ceasefire, in the centre of Khan Yunis.
The target, it seems, were two suspected Palestinian militants who were riding a motorcycle. They were hit and injured, but so too were 16 civilians, almost all of them children, as might have been predicted considering the location and time of the missile strike.
It was launched at a point opposite the hospital, only a few metres distant from the entrance to a UN primary school and directly in front of a row of food stalls. The attack was launched at 11.30am, just as children were leaving school at the end of the morning lessons.
Eyad al-Astal Family:
On 2 January, three boys from the al-Astal family –
8-year-old Abderrabbo, his brother
Mohammed, aged 11, and
Abd-al-Sattar al-Astal, also just 11 –
were killed by a missile fired from a drone while collecting sugar cane in al-Qarara, north-east of Khan Yunis. At the scene, we again found metal posts peppered with the signature square holes from the shrapnel blasted from the drone missile.
Another characteristic of these missiles is a small hole that penetrates deep into the ground, leaving few remains. We asked to borrow a shovel from local farmers in order to dig down and try to recover any remains from the missile. At this, some village youths stepped up enthusiastically and began to dig into the sandy ground.
Some six feet down, they recovered small parts of the circuit board and other shards of the missile. We urged the children’s family to hold on to these and keep them safe, as possible evidence to be considered in any future investigation.
Faulty intelligence, wanton recklessness, or a combination of the two [PDF]
-- A 13-year-old girl who was asleep in her bed;
-- three primary school-age boys who were carrying sugar canes;
-- two young women on their way to a shelter in search of safety;
-- a 13-year-old boy on his bicycle;
-- eight secondary school students who were waiting for the school bus to take them home;
-- an entire family sitting outside their home –
these are among the many victims of missiles fired from Israeli UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), commonly known as drones.
Here in Gaza people call the drones “zannana”, an onomatopoeic description reflecting the buzzing sound that they emit as they fly overhead. Their main function is surveillance, but, in recent years, Israeli forces have also used them to fire missiles, often to assassinate “wanted” Palestinians.
An Israeli journalist told us that the military censor does not permit Israeli media to publish any reference to strikes by drones. These missiles seem to be very precise, with a relatively small but concentrated radius.
Yet, they have killed or injured hundreds of civilians, including many children, though the reason for this – whether due to faulty intelligence, wanton recklessness, or a combination of the two – is unclear.
In many of the cases we investigated, we found a consistent pattern: each missile is packed with tiny metal cubes that increase its lethal effect. These are blasted with extreme force, penetrating through metal doors and steel pylons and embedding deep into concrete walls.
Today, we visited the place where a missile fired from a drone killed two women and three children from the same family on the morning of 15 January. It was in a Bedouin village on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, in north Gaza. Those killed were three children, their mother and their grandmother.
The family’s home had been destroyed some 10 days earlier by the blast from a powerful air strike that apparently targeted a nearby tunnel. After this, the family had gone to stay with relatives across the road. The two women and three children were killed by the missile when they returned to the remains of their home to retrieve some of their possessions.
Earlier, we investigated several other cases in the Khan Yunis area, in the south of the Gaza Strip. There, the latest drone attack had occurred on 29 January, despite the 11-day-old ceasefire, in the centre of Khan Yunis.
The target, it seems, were two suspected Palestinian militants who were riding a motorcycle. They were hit and injured, but so too were 16 civilians, almost all of them children, as might have been predicted considering the location and time of the missile strike.
It was launched at a point opposite the hospital, only a few metres distant from the entrance to a UN primary school and directly in front of a row of food stalls. The attack was launched at 11.30am, just as children were leaving school at the end of the morning lessons.
Eyad al-Astal Family:
On 2 January, three boys from the al-Astal family –
8-year-old Abderrabbo, his brother
Mohammed, aged 11, and
Abd-al-Sattar al-Astal, also just 11 –
were killed by a missile fired from a drone while collecting sugar cane in al-Qarara, north-east of Khan Yunis. At the scene, we again found metal posts peppered with the signature square holes from the shrapnel blasted from the drone missile.
Another characteristic of these missiles is a small hole that penetrates deep into the ground, leaving few remains. We asked to borrow a shovel from local farmers in order to dig down and try to recover any remains from the missile. At this, some village youths stepped up enthusiastically and began to dig into the sandy ground.
Some six feet down, they recovered small parts of the circuit board and other shards of the missile. We urged the children’s family to hold on to these and keep them safe, as possible evidence to be considered in any future investigation.
