Informant38

Palestinian doctors despair at rising toll of children
shot dead by army snipers

...then thou shalt give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth
hand for hand, foot for foot,
burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe...
-
And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.
And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;
breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth
-
And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth...

Ahmed Mughayer, 13, and his sister Asma, 16

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.

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 in the fair and balanced Washington Post, May.19.04

_

Israel disputes the Mughayar family's account: that soldiers shot the children on Tuesday. 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.
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.

Chris McGreal/Guardian UK May.20.04

�
news links Lawrence of Cyberia
-
Bible holiness at Bartleby