Alucard <alucard44@hotmail.dk> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:57:49 +0200, per@RQNNE.invalid (Per Rønne)
> wrote:
>
> >> Jeg ville ikke blive overrasket hvis det viste sig at være en gammel
> >> mine der eksploderede, men det finder vi nok aldrig ud af....
> >
> >Det er faktisk det avisen skriver, at man regner med. En gammel
> >palæstinensisk landmine, der skulle modvirke en israelsk invasion.
>
> Men historien, om at israelske krigsskibe skyder løs på uskyldige
> badegæster, dør aldrig......
Sikkert ikke.
Og da linket til Jerusalem Post har det med at forsvinde:
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
IDF says it's not responsible for Gaza beach blast
Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 13, 2006
"The IDF is innocent," was the bottom line that came out of a press
conference Tuesday night, during which Defense Minister Amir Peretz,
Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and other top officers
presented the findings of an internal military investigation into
Friday's explosion that killed seven Palestinians as they picnicked on a
Gaza beach.
In a press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Peretz told
reporters that following an extensive three-day investigation the IDF
had collected sufficient evidence to prove that Friday's explosion was
not caused by Israel. The evidence was being presented first and
foremost to the Israeli people, Peretz emphasized, saying, "We owe it to
ourselves to know that we did not cause these deaths."
"We have sufficient evidence which confirms our suspicion that the
attempts to portray this incident as caused by Israel were wrong,"
Peretz said. "I know it is difficult to explain this, but the facts that
have accumulated prove that Israel was not behind the incident."
In contrast to daily Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel, Peretz
added, the IDF made great efforts to avoid harming innocent
Palestinians. "In all IDF operations one of the issues that is taken
into consideration and sometimes adds risk to ourselves is the need to
not cause harm to innocent civilians," the defense minister said.
Halutz said that, while the IDF expressed regret immediately following
the incident, it did not mean to take upon itself responsibility for the
explosion. Referring to Tuesday's missile strike on an Islamic Jihad
terror cell in Gaza that killed eight innocent Palestinians, Halutz
stressed that the rocket cells operated from within densely populated
areas.
"We will not let them get away with their attacks and the
[responsibility] for the price the Palestinians are paying lies on the
shoulders of the Palestinian Authority and the other groups that should
be doing everything possible to prevent these events from occurring,"
Halutz said.
Peretz also expressed regret for the harm caused to innocent civilians
in Tuesday's missile strike. But, he said, "all the organizations
attacking us are trying to hurt our civilians. They act from within
population centers while knowing that they are endangering the
population."
"The bottom line," Halutz said, "is that we are very sad that innocent
people were killed due to an explosion that happened on the seashore of
the Gaza Strip but it has no connection to Israeli military activity
that happened that same day."
Presenting the technical findings was Deputy Head of the IDF Ground
Forces Command Maj.-Gen. Meir Klifi, who headed up the investigation
into the incident on Friday. Standing in front of an array of maps and
movie screens, Klifi showed aerial photographs of IDF attacks on
northern Gaza that day while presenting the time line of events that led
to the deadly explosion on the beach.
An analysis of the location of the incident together with its timing -
between 16:57 and 17:10 - Klifi said, proved that Israel could not have
been behind the explosion since neither the Air Force, the Navy nor
artillery cannons were in action at the time.
One IAF strike on the Gaza Strip that day, he said, occurred 2.5
kilometers from the scene of the explosion and two other strikes took
place hours earlier. Ruling out Navy fire, Klifi said that "every 76-mm.
shell fired from the navy boats can be accounted for since they all hit
their targets successfully." In fact, Klifi said, "the ones that fell
closest to the location of the incident were fired four hours earlier."
Artillery shelling, he added, could also not have been responsible for
the explosion. A piece of shrapnel taken from one of the wounded being
treated in an Israeli hospital and cross-checked with 155-mm. Shells
used by the IDF proved that the explosion was not caused by Israeli
artillery fire. "The fragment taken out of the wounded showed absolutely
that it is not connected to any [type of] Israeli ammunition used that
day," Halutz said.
The army, Klifi said, has also accounted for five of the six shells that
were fired in the area Friday evening before the beach explosion.
None of them exploded nearby, he said, adding that the one shell that
was not accounted for was fired before the five others and more than 10
minutes before the blast.
Peretz and Halutz did show signs of disagreement after they were both
asked separately if they would be willing to allow an international
third party to inspect the shrapnel sample taken from one of the
wounded. Peretz said he would consider the possibility but later, after
he had already left the briefing, Halutz was asked the same question by
the foreign press and said he was confident with the IDF's internal
probe and that there was no reason to cast doubt in its professionalism.
In Gaza, Human Rights Watch military expert Marc Garlasco inspected the
shrapnel at the scene and saw the wounded. He concluded that the blast
was caused by an Israeli shell. However, he held open the slim
possibility that it was planted there by Palestinian militants, though
fragment patterns did not back that.
"Our information certainly supports, I believe, an Israeli shell did
come in and kill these people," he said, ruling out a land mine.
Garlasco was the first independent expert to inspect the scene.
Palestinians also rejected the possibility that their own explosives
caused the fatal blast.
"This is a false allegation, and the Israeli occupation state is trying
to escape from shouldering its responsibility by accusing Palestinians
without evidence or any proof," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the
Hamas-led Palestinian government.
"The eyewitnesses and the evidence that we have confirm that the
massacre is the result of Israeli shelling, and the allegation about
land mines planted by Palestinians is baseless," he said.
AP contributed to this report.
This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150035838991&pagename=JPost%
2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post -
http://www.jpost.com/
--
Per Erik Rønne
http://www.RQNNE.dk