NYT: US Human shield killed by Israel

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Mar 18 06:36:01 PST 2003


[You'll find it buried in the last three paragraphs. Funny. Deaths of US citizens are normally news.]

[The headline is kind of interesting too. It implies one innocent victim. I count 9. And that's just the dead, not even counting the wounded & homeless.]

[Meanwhile, by current mainstream US standards, this has to be ranked as a very critical article.]

The New York Times March 18, 2003

An Israeli Raid Yields Dead Militant and Innocent Victim

By GREG MYRE

N USEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, March 17 Nisreen al-Assar was

enduring a sleepless night at the hospital, tending to her 4-month-old

son, who had a high fever, when ambulances began delivering

Palestinian casualties at dawn today, after an Israeli Army raid in

the central Gaza Strip.

Looking out the window, Mrs. Assar saw her brother-in-law at the

hospital entrance, and feared a family member had been harmed. Racing

to the emergency room, her eyes immediately locked on a little girl

with wavy brown hair and a pink blouse smeared with blood her

3-year-old daughter, Elham on a stretcher.

"She kissed me and my son when we left for the hospital last night,

and now she's dead," said a sobbing Mrs. Assar, 24, surrounded by

mourners this afternoon at a neighbor's house in this refugee camp.

A pair of early morning Israeli Army raids in Gaza killed 10

Palestinians today, including a leading militant in the Islamic Jihad

movement, and netted seven arrests.

It was the latest blow in Israel's month-old Gaza offensive that has

seen the killings and arrests of several senior Palestinian militants.

But the tanks and other armored vehicles, which operate mostly at

night in densely packed cities, towns and refugee camps, have also

inflicted many civilian casualties.

Palestinian security officials and hospital spokesmen said those

killed today included a militant, two Palestinian security force

members, and four civilians aged 19 or younger. The affiliations of

three of the dead were not clear.

Israel says it has been forced to act because the Palestinian security

forces failed to stop attacks, and that militants hide in congested

civilian areas, hoping to protect themselves from the Israeli forces.

As an example, the Israeli Army pointed to its raid on the home of

Muhammad Saafin, an Islamic Jihad leader accused of orchestrating

shooting, bombing and mortar attacks against Israeli targets in Gaza.

"In recent days, Saafin and his group were planning serious attacks,"

the army said.

Soldiers spent much of the night waiting for Mr. Saafin to return to

his apartment in a three-story building in the refugee camp. An

unmanned army drone filmed his car arriving before dawn, and that was

the signal for a special forces unit to strike.

The ensuing events were described by a pool reporter who was allowed

to accompany the special forces.

The troops sped down Gaza's coastal highway, with night-vision goggles

on and headlights off. As army engineers rigged a small explosive to

blow open the front door, Palestinian gunfire began raining down from

the roof of the building. Sleeping residents awoke, and a soldier then

called through a loudspeaker for Mr. Saafin to give himself up.

"Do you want the building to come down on top of you?" the soldier

said in Arabic. "Think of your children."

The response was gunshots, and both sides unleashed repeated bursts of

automatic fire. Amid the chaos, men, women and children streamed out

of the house in their pajamas, and troops pulled them aside.

Mr. Saafin refused to surrender, firing an AK-47 rifle and tossing

pipe bombs from his rooftop perch.

The confrontation ended when a bullet struck him in the face and he

fell to the ground. Mr. Saafin's brother Sami, who was also wanted by

the Israelis, identified the body, and was then placed in a military

jeep, bound and blindfolded.

Army engineers used dynamite to bring down the house, home to five

families, Palestinians said. Last year, Israel revived an old practice

of destroying the homes of militants in a bid to discourage future

attacks. Palestinians and human rights groups have denounced the

measure, saying it punishes innocents as well.

Elsewhere in the camp, soldiers in tanks and armored personnel

carriers exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in street-to-street

fighting.

"Our roof was shaking from the tanks in the street," said Eatemad

al-Assar, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Assar who lives in the same house.

"The bullets sounded like a heavy rain."

Eatemad al-Assar, who has five children, was looking after three of

Mrs. Assar's children when she went to the hospital on Sunday night.

The children were scared by the shooting, but also wanted to see, and

gathered in the front room of the house. As the shooting roared, and

ambulances wailed, someone opened the door to look, Eatemad al-Assar

said.

Palestinian gunmen were crawling on their bellies in the street, just

outside. Two Israeli tanks were down the road.

A moment later, 3-year-old Elham was flat on the floor, looking as if

she had fainted; there was no sign of blood, said her aunt. Her

husband splashed water on the girl's face, but got no response. Blood

began dripping from her back, and the family scrambled to hail an

ambulance. She never regained consciousness.

In a separate Israeli action in northern Gaza, troops clashed with

Palestinian security force members and gunmen near Beit Lahia. Two

members of the Palestinian security forces and a civilian were killed,

the Palestinians said.

The Israelis have been patroling the area trying to halt Palestinian

rocket fire on the Israeli town of Sederot. Palestinians fired five

rockets at the town today.

The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, today praised Rachel Corrie, a

23-year-old American woman who was crushed and killed Sunday as she

knelt in front of an Israeli Army bulldozer preparing to tear down a

Palestinian home in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Mr. Arafat, in Ramallah

in the West Bank, called her "our sister, the martyr Rachel Corrie."

Ms. Corrie's colleagues said that she was in full view of the

bulldozer driver, and that he ran her over intentionally. The Israeli

military said the driver did not see her, and called it a "very

regrettable accident."

Ms. Corrie, from Olympia, Wash., belonged to the International

Solidarity Movement, a group of mostly American and European

activists. The group sympathizes with the Palestinians, and its

members have acted as human shields, repeatedly placing themselves in

front of Israeli troops operating in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

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