Slaughter in Rafah

[poopyhead]

Palestinians Say Blast at Protest Kills at Least 10

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?hp
registration required

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: May 19, 2004

Filed at 10:46 a.m. ET

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli forces fired a missile and a tank shell Wednesday into a large crowd of Palestinians demonstrating against the invasion of a neighboring refugee camp, witnesses said. At least 10 Palestinians were killed, all children and teenagers, a Palestinian health official said.

At least 50 people were wounded, 36 critically, Palestinian hospital officials said.

Palestinian witnesses saw a missile land in the middle of the crowd of 3,000 demonstrators, and Associated Press Television Network footage showed smoke and debris flying as a large explosion rocked the area. The footage then showed Palestinians carrying the wounded, including children, from the smoky scene.

Military sources said on condition of anonymity that a helicopter and a tank fired one round each near the crowd after soldiers felt threatened.

Palestinian witnesses said four missiles and four tank shells were fired, and they also heard machine-gun fire from tanks.

The White House said it was ``very concerned'' about the reports.

The demonstrators were marching down the busy main street of Rafah town, protesting against the Israeli invasion of the nearby Tel Sultan neighborhood in Rafah refugee camp. When the crowd was less than a mile from the besieged camp, the helicopter and tank began firing, witnesses said.

The wounded were evacuated to the Rafah hospital by ambulance, private cars and donkey carts, witnesses said. The hospital stairs and floors were drenched in blood as doctors shouted for help and blood donations. Hospital staff treated the wounded on the floors after quickly running out of beds.

Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a senior Palestinian Health Ministry official, said at least 10 people were killed and 50 wounded. Of the wounded, 23 were critically hurt and 13 were in ``hopeless'' condition. Most of the wounded were children, he said.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told The Associated Press the attack was ``a terrorist massacre and a terrorist war crime.''

The strike came as Israeli troops stormed homes in the Palestinian refugee camp in an ongoing search for militants and illegal weapons, confining tens of thousands of residents to houses without electricity or water.

The invasion, launched Tuesday, knocked out power in the camp, home to an estimated 90,000 people, local Palestinian officials said. By Wednesday, they said, water service had been halted as well.

Twenty Palestinians -- the highest single-day death toll in more than two years -- were killed on the first day of the army's ``Operation Rainbow'' offensive. The victims included a 13-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister.

International condemnation mounted against the operation, and the United States was asking Israel for ``clarification,'' said Paul Patin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.

President Bush has described the violence as ``troubling'' but said Israel had the right to defend itself from terrorism.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the Gaza offensive as ``unacceptable and wrong.''

The United Nations and European Union demanded an end to the incursion, which Israeli security officials said would last at least a week.

The massive invasion -- the largest in the Gaza Strip in years -- came less than a week after Palestinian militants killed 13 soldiers, including seven in the Rafah area.

Israel said it was targeting armed militants, but Palestinians said many of Tuesday's casualties were civilians.

Ali Bayomi, a 55-year-old resident of Rafah, said soldiers disguised as Hamas militants arrested two of his cousins and were using the men as human shields as they conducted searches of homes. The army did not comment.

``There is no water, no electricity, and it is very hard to move inside the house using candles because snipers in the building next door will shoot you,'' Abu Jazar said.

The army said it shot and hit two armed men overnight in Rafah. Palestinian residents said one man was shot in the head and stomach, the other in the leg. They said the intense fighting was making it hard for ambulances to evacuate the dead and wounded.

The facades of Rafah buildings were riddled with holes from Israeli machine guns. Residents said the rocket and gun fire had confined them to the innermost rooms of their homes.

Saleem Katib, 25, said his ailing, elderly father went to morning prayers early Tuesday and still had not returned. Trapped by the fighting and the military curfew, the man was holed up near the mosque with other worshippers, his son said.

``How can you believe that a man can't reach his home when he is only 20 meters away?'' Katib said.

In all, 19 Palestinians were killed Tuesday by Israeli fire -- 10 in two separate missile strikes and nine by machine-gun fire, Hassanain said. A 20th man was killed while handling explosives.

Arafat denounced the incursion as a ``planned massacre.''

``What is happening in Rafah is an operation to destroy and to transfer the local Palestinian population, and this must not be accepted, not by the Palestinians, nor the Arabs, nor by the international community,'' an angry Arafat told reporters at his West Bank compound.

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a petition by 46 Rafah residents against demolition of their homes, giving the army the right to tear down buildings that could be used for attacking troops.

Troops demolished four houses Tuesday, witnesses said. The Israeli army chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said homes would be destroyed only if gunmen used them as firing positions or to cover up tunnels.

The washington post has a slightly different take on the situation with much less detail
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38959-2004May19.html

I find it ironic that this is "operation rainbow" typically a symbol of peace and the first covenant

[Taft]

Palestinians Say Blast at Protest Kills at Least 10

The region is a wreck. After hearing news like this, it's hard not to see both sides as guilty in the ever escalating violence.

Enter Sly who will tell us these children were "military targets"...

Taft

[mactastic]

Don't forget, it's only worthy of condemnation if the helicopter and tank pilots commit suicide in the process of killing civilians. :rolleyes:

[Taft]

Don't forget, it's only worthy of condemnation if the helicopter and tank pilots commit suicide in the process of killing civilians. :rolleyes:

Doh! I forgot about that rule. I stand corrected.

I must remember...Isreal good...Palestinians bad...end of story. I'll get it right someday. :rolleyes:

Taft

[Chip NoVaMac]

Doh! I forgot about that rule. I stand corrected.

I must remember...Isreal good...Palestinians bad...end of story. I'll get it right someday. :rolleyes:

Taft

And the US keeps forgetting the rule that my parents had, "that you are judged by the friends you keep".

[blackfox]

And the US keeps forgetting the rule that my parents had, "that you are judged by the fiends you keep".
I assume that is a typo...but it makes an interesting point in itself...

[Chip NoVaMac]

I assume that is a typo...but it makes an interesting point in itself...

Sorry for the typo... I corrected it....

[poopyhead]

Follow up

sorry no link it was emailed to me by a news group
for anyone interested its called "Partners for Peace" and is comprised of Israeli and Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians disturbed by the on going human rights problems in Israel
they are a non profit organization which sponsor talks and community discussions ("Jerusalem Women Speak: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared Vision") about the actual effects of occupation on both the Palestinians and Israelis
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partnersforpeace/

Israeli Shells Hit Crowd of Palestinians, Killing at Least 9
By JAMES BENNET
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 20 — As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.

The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.

As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.

The Israeli Army expressed "deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives" and said it was
investigating the "very grave incident," but it said its troops did not fire deliberately on the marchers.

In a statement, it said that a helicopter had shot flares and "warning fire" of one missile toward an open area. It said that, because the crowd "continued to converge toward the troops," machine gun fire was opened at an "abandoned structure," and four tanks shells were also fired at the same building.

"It is possible that the casualties were a result of the tank fire on the abandoned structure," the statement continued, adding that this was "an area of combat" and that Palestinians had planted explosives in the road.

Palestinian witnesses angrily denied that any gunmen were present in the march. A reporter who was present saw two young men with semi-automatic rifles standing on the sidewalk at the rear of the marchers' route, but did not see any guns or other weapons brandished among hundreds of protesters.

In wailing ambulances and battered sedans, the wounded were rushed through rutted sand lanes to Al Najar hospital. There, shouting, shoving men converged on each vehicle, grasping for the wounded and rushing them up a concrete ramp that was spotted crimson and into the hospital.

Inside, one boy wearing only blue shorts pressed a hand to a bulky white bandage over his right eye. He lay on a flowered mattress on the floor, his face a mask of bewilderment and fear. Someone had scrawled his name in ink on his chest.

Medics lowered another boy on a stretcher onto the floor beside the first. His left pants leg, which had been torn open, was soaked with blood, and his left leg was heavily bandaged below the knee.

Turning his face as he fought back tears, Kemal Breika, 38, hovered beside the stretcher of his son, Atta, 10. "When they fired the shell, I was knocked to the ground, and my son fell on me, with shrapnel in him," Mr. Breika said.

Hisham Ashoul, 45, said the marchers had just crossed Tel Zarub square here when a hovering helicopter unleashed a missile, and a tank on a hill about 150 yards ahead opened fire. "I saw the tank fire," he said. "When we were collecting the children from the ground, they fired again."

Hospital officials were still trying to identify some of mutilated bodies this evening, but they said they had identified at least three children, aged 12, 13, and 15. One of them died not from shrapnel but from a gunshot to the head, the officials said.

Together with several other Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy who was killed in Tel al-Sultan today, the fatalities among the protesters brought to at least 33 the number of Palestinians to die since Israeli bulldozers and tanks rolled into southern Gaza on Tuesday.

Palestinian officials called the incident an Israeli war crime, and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal.

At the White House, the press secretary, Scott McLellan, said that the Bush administration had asked Israel for "the facts about what happened today." He said, "We are very concerned about reports from Gaza and the number of Palestinians who are said to have been injured and killed."

And Mr. Bush said: "I continue to urge restraint. It is essential that people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace. And we'll get clarification from the government."

The deaths and injuries of the protesters received widespread news coverage in Israel,
feeding a growing debate about this Israeli incursion and a broader one about any presence of Israeli settlers and soldiers in Gaza.

The justice minister, Joseph Lapid, a leader of the centrist Shinui faction, seized on the deaths as further evidence that Israel should withdraw. He called the incident "A mistake, a human and diplomatic tragedy that is a result of the army's presence in Gaza."

At the Israeli parliament, Zeev Boim, the deputy defense minister, said, "We must express regret at the loss, regardless of the numbers and details."

But, he said, the demonstration was not entirely innocent. "It's not the May first parade," he said. "This is a war zone, and there are civilians in war zones. Some of them are innocent. Some are far from it and are deeply involved in terror, even when they remain defined as civilians."

Until today, Rafah had been relatively quiet, as, to the residents' surprise, Israeli forces concentrated instead on Tel al-Sultan, just to the north. Palestinians here say that militants in the area are based in Rafah. Here, Israeli forces demolished more than 80 houses last week in what the Army said was a search for weapons smuggling tunnels under an Israeli-patrolled zone and across the border with Egypt.


Israeli drones buzzed overhead today, and residents kept a wary eye on passing helicopter gunships. But those are familiar sounds and sights here, and for the most part residents of Rafah went about their business, while in Tel al-Sultan, thousands were shut in their homes by an Israeli-imposed curfew. Electricity and water was also cut off from the area, Palestinian officials said.

Before the deaths here this afternoon, an Israeli colonel leading the operation briefed reporters on its goals and tactics. Although higher-ranking officers on Tuesday had stressed the search for smuggling tunnels, this officer, identified only as Colonel Erez, said that Israeli troops in Tel al-Sultan were going house-to-house in a search for ammunition and wanted men.

"The roads and alleys are all lined with bombs and many homes are booby-trapped," he said.

He argued that Israel's decision to use ground troops, rather than simply bomb the neighborhood from the air, showed its concern for Palestinian civilians and "maintaining our moral posture."

Several wounded Palestinians interviewed in the last 24 hours said they were shot by snipers when they stepped out into the street. Noting the curfew, Colonel Erez said, "Someone who exits is obviously someone who is looking for trouble" and was therefore "a legitimate target."