Secret Israeli report 'reveals armed drone killed' four children playing on Gaza beach in 2014
haaretz.com
The
Israeli strike that killed four Palestinian children that were playing
on the beach in Gaza in 2014 was committed by an armed Israeli drone,
according to an Israeli military police report that was obtained by The Intercept.
The report, which was
confidential and concealed from the public until now, confirms that the
four cousins were chased by an armed drone that mistook them for Hamas
fighters.
The four Palestinian
children, Ismayil Bahar (aged nine), Aed Bahar (aged ten), Zacharia
Bahar, (aged ten) and Muhammed Bahar, (aged 11), were killed in June 2014.
According to the
newly revealed report attained by The Intercept, which includes
testimony from the drone operators, commanders, and intelligence
officers who took part in the attack, an Israeli surveillance drone had
identified a small shipping container on a jetty and had destroyed it a
day before the attack that killed the four children. Israel reportedly
had intelligence that indicated the shipping container had been used by
Hamas naval commandos to store weapons.
The
next day, according to the report, a figure was seen entering the
container that had been destroyed the previous day. The military then
used an armed drone to attack the jetty. The missile killed the person
who had entered the container. The drone operators then launch a second
strike, which killed the three other children, as they fled across the
beach.
Initially,
the mission was considered "a success," according to one naval officer
who gave testimony in the military police investigation. The IDF had
apparently believed they had killed four Hamas militants. However, since
the
attack had taken place in broad daylight and near a group of
journalists who had witnessed the strikes from their hotel terrace
overlooking the beach, it quickly became clear that the four were children.
Initially, back in
2014, the IDF Spokesperson unit had difficulty coming up with an
explanation for the explosions which killed the four children and
wounded others and it took a few hours for them to begin to respond.
Toward the end of the day of the attack, they began briefing reporters
that the first explosion was most likely caused by an attack on a
"legitimate" Hamas target and the second the result of misidentification
of the fleeing children as Hamas fighters.
According to the
report obtained by The Intercept, all the people involved in the strike,
including the air force officer who coordinated the attack, informed
investigators that they could not "tell they were children.”
Reportedly, after the
first missile was fired and killed the first boys, sending the other
children running, the drone team requested clarification from a superior
officer about how far onto the beach they were permitted to fire.
However,
they did not wait for the response. Instead, they fired a second
missile at the fleeing children, about 30 seconds after the first
strike, which killed three of the boys and wounded at least one more of
their cousins.
The air force officer
who coordinated the strikes told investigators that the intelligence
the strike team had was starkly different from the facts on the ground.
The main new finding
from the revealed report is that the IDF used a drone in this
attack. The Israeli government maintains an official stance of secrecy
around its use of drones to carry out airstrikes. According to The
Intercept, this revealed report is "the most direct evidence to date
that Israel has used armed drones to launch attacks in Gaza."
Haaretz
Commenti
Posta un commento