Purity Of Arms

The bodies of Palestinian Ahmed Mughayer, 13, and his sister Asma, 16, right, are wrapped in blankets after being brought from the Talesultan area of the Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 18, 2004. Both were on the roof of their three-story apartment building when they were hit by army fire, said their older brother, Ali. The shots were fired from an Israeli army position on the sixth floor of the neighboring building, he said. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

"The tiny hole buried under Asma Mughayar's thick black hair, just above her right ear, is an illusion, according to the Israeli army. So is her family's insistance that Asma, 16, and her younger brother Ahmed, were both shot through the head by an Israeli soldier as they fed their pigeons and collected the laundry from the roof of their home in Rafah refugee camp...

Hours after their death, Israeli officials blamed the Palestinians, telling reporters that Asma and Ahmed had been killed in a "work accident" - a euphemism for bomb-makers blowing themselves up - or by Palestinian fighters who had left a landmine in the street. "A preliminary investigation indicates they were killed by a bomb intended to be used against soldiers. It was set outside a building by Palestinians to hit an Israeli vehicle. This is probably what happened," a military spokesman said yesterday.

-- Chris McGreal, "Palestinian doctors despair at rising toll of children shot dead by army snipers", The Guardian.

Israel said it was targeting armed militants, but Palestinians said many of Tuesday's casualties were civilians. Palestinians said the teenage brother and sister were killed by an Israeli sniper as they gathered laundry from their rooftop. But the military said an initial investigation found no Israeli soldiers had fired in that area at the time of the shootings. The military said the two had apparently been killed by a Palestinian bomb aimed at troops.

-- Kevin Frayer, "Israelis Fire on Gaza Demonstration", Washington Post.

Dr Ali Moussa, head of Rafah hospital, is as furious at the claim as he is at Israel's assertion that almost all the 20 or more people killed during the army's seizure of the Tel al-Sultan district of the Rafah refugee camp were armed men. 'They are liars, liars, liars, because these children have bullet wounds to the head. There is no doubt about it,' he says.

Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma's body from the mortuary's refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager's hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other.

'The Israeli propaganda is that they were killed in a work accident. These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time,' he says. 'They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?'. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries, particularly of the kind that might be expected from a blast, such as shrapnel spread across the body, burns, or mutilation.

-- Chris McGreal, "Palestinian doctors despair at rising toll of children shot dead by army snipers", The Guardian.

Ahmed Mughayer, 14, was laid out with 13 other corpses on the floor of the refrigeration room of a flower and plant growers' firm on the outskirts of town. Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaira removed the sheet and raised Ahmed's trunk for us to see where the bullet had made a small incision on his forehead just above his hairline. Then he pointed to the exit wound, a much larger and bloodier hole in the back of his head.

Dr Nkaira wasn't doing this for the sake of it. He wanted reporters to see how untenable had been the Israeli army's official explanation that the Mughayer siblings been killed by an accidentally exploded Palestinian bomb.

The bodies showed no sign of any other damage or bleeding. No damage at all, apart from what Dr Nkaira - an experienced casualty medic in a hospital which has seen more dead bodies than most in the occupied territories - had not a scintilla of doubt was a wound from an Israeli bullet. 'This is the 'accident' that the Israelis are talking about,' he said. 'This is how the Israelis talk all the time. I am sorry the Europeans and the Americans believe these kind of stories.'

-- Donald MacIntyre, A brother, a sister, and a morgue too full for them both, The Independent.

At the Mughairs' three-storey house the children's older brother, Ali, 26, showed us the spot in the corner of the rooftop where, he said, Asma had been taking in laundry when a bullet blew the side of her head off... In the stairwell another pool of blood and brains marked the spot where Ahmed was killed...The rooftop area showed no signs of an explosion. Two large metal satellite dishes were completely unmarked by shrapnel or scorching, although there were three bullet holes in one of the dishes. The wall around the rooftop was unscarred.

Mr Mughair pointed to the spot from which, he says, the sniper or snipers shot his siblings. A crude hole was visible in the wall of a high residential building, a little over 100 metres away. The owners of this building, the Abu Jalalla family, said that at 10am on Tuesday it was taken over by Israeli troops who kept them all under armed guard in one room of the house until 2am the next day.

A visit to the upper floors revealed that several holes had been knocked through the walls to provide firing points, with mattresses and chairs arranged to allow shooters to watch comfortably for targets. Half-eaten Israeli Army rations were discarded in the rooms and on the roof, as were spent 7.62mm and 5.56mm bullet cases.

On the roof, the hole that Mr Mughair indicated as the firing point gave an excellent view over his rooftop. Beside the hole lay a discarded cardboard box. The Hebrew writing on the box read: "20 rounds 7.62 mm ammunition for snipers"...

Officially the Israeli Defence Force says that the incident is still under investigation. Israeli military sources continue to say that a Palestinian bomb may have killed the children.

-- Ed O'Loughlin, Palestinian family blames Israeli sniper for deaths of two children, Sydney Morning Herald.

... we must ask ourselves as Jews and Zionists: Have we lost the basic ability to distinguish between good and bad, between morality and cruelty, between truth and 'truth'... Have we been eyeless in Gaza? And what are we doing there anyway?

-- Israel daily, Yediot Aharonot, 20 May 2004.