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Wed 8 Nov, 2006 11:29 am
http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/1bf6f3fd02c2d11a/cs/1/
Quote:At least 19 Palestinians, including ten children, and 7 women were killed, early Wednesday, by Israeli tanks in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel's defense minister has ordered a halt to all shelling in Gaza, pending an investigation into the incident.
Palestinian witnesses say artillery shells from Israeli tanks struck seven houses in Beit Hanoun in the pre-dawn hours, Wednesday. Hospital emergency rooms in Gaza City say more than 50 people were wounded in the attack - most of them women and children who were struck by the shells as they slept.
"We pulled out bodies, all women and children, dismembered, without heads or hands," Khaled Abu Saada, a Palestinian ambulance driver who evacuated the wounded to hospitals, told Ynet News.
One of the women standing near the street said she had lost four of her children in the incident.
The ambulance driver who arrived at the scene was also the first to treat the Ghalia family in the Gaza beachfront incident several months ago. He said that all of Beit Hanoun "is busy with only one thing, moving the dead and wounded. All this between puddles of blood, lots of blood and body parts, next to some of the bodies were the schoolbags and sandwiches of children preparing to go to school."
Another witness said that the shelled houses had been completely destroyed.
Several residents assaulted medical teams who arrived at the scene to help, saying that they had taken too long. Two emergency medical personnel were wounded from the assaults.
Witnesses told Ynet the majority of the casualties were killed in their beds. Atef Hamed, 22, told Reuters, "It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen. We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street."
Reuters also reported that the town was filled with cries for help. One man was screaming "Where is my son?". Neighbors did not have the heart to tell him his son was dead.
The incident came just one day after Israeli forces pulled out of Beit Hanoun after operation Autumn Clouds ended. The operation, aimed at reducing Palestinian rocket fire at Israel's south, resulted in the deaths of 63 Palestinians, most of them gunmen.
Ahmad al-Madhoun, a resident of Beit Hanoun told Ynet "We haven't recovered yet, we rush from one mourning tent to the other because of the operation that only ended yesterday and already we have to deal with a new massacre. Difficult images, dead children, injured children with their faces torn. It's unbelievable."
There were difficult images in the town's hospital as well, where mothers cried out as they carried their injured children.
The Arab and Palestinian media are providing broad coverage of the incident, which they are calling 'the Palestinian Qana village', comparing the incident to the Israeli Air Force attack of Qana during the recent war in Lebanon.
Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz appointed Maj. Gen. Meir Kalifi, deputy commander of the Israeli army Ground Forces corps, to head a team of experts who will investigate the incident in Beit Hanoun.
Halutz ordered Maj. Gen. Kalifi to give the matter the utmost priority and present his findings as soon as possible. Maj. Gen. Kalifi also headed the investigation of the Ghalia family incident in June.
Brig. Gen. (res) Danny Kasif, former Israeli army Chief Artillery Commander, spoke with Ynet about the Beit Hanoun incident, saying that "if the shell deviated 500 meters from its target, then it could very well be a mistake. The coordinates of the target must be examined, to see if they were accurate until the deviation."
"We have to remember the reality we are living in, with terror organizations using all means and launching Qassam rockets at Israel, also from populated areas and from homes," a senior military source said.
"We have no interest in hurting a civil population. We are trying to use a very cautious policy and are succeeding with that. Those who are endangering the civil population are the terror organizations," the source added.
Military sources told Ynet that an initial investigation revealed that an Israeli army gunner battery fired 12 missiles at a spot from where Qassams were fired at Ashkelon on Tuesday, as well as a nearby spot from where militants were planning to fire Qassams on Wednesday morning, according to information obtained by Israeli forces.
Israel is quite easily the most vile state on the earth.
I'm not ready to call them the most vile state on earth, but I think that they operate without checks in the occupied territories, and it certainly appears that they don't regard Palestinian civilian lives as being worth much of anything. I can't believe this would have gone without comment if it had been perpetrated by any other state.
Yeah.
By the way my "ugh" is to the first two posts and the fact of it, not to stevewonder's statement (though I do agree it's hyperbolic).
the thing about the israeli state is the way it FORCES people around the world to 'like it.'
It reminds me of the side kick of the school bully, who used the bully to threaten the other kids.
Take France so people like it some loath it, but France does not bully and coherce people into liking it, it is actually content with the notion that people out there might dislike it, same with nearly all other countries.
If on the other you express a disliking for Israel, then you are attacked for uttering such an opinion by right wing nut jobs, why are we not given the freedom to state our dislike for 'Israel's horse sh*t' 'policies'
I think it's the specter of the holocaust.
FreeDuck wrote:I think it's the specter of the holocaust.
remind why we are never to forget genocide?
Is it not because it should never happen again?
and is that not what Israel is guilty of a genocide?
stevewonder wrote:Israel is quite easily the most vile state on the earth.
I wonder why no one yet labelled you as "anti-semitic"... Thats what happens to most people if they criticize Israel.
:wink: