Army
Chief 'Emptied His Magazine'
At Girl In Gaza
By Donald Macintyre
12 October 2004
The Independent
Two
separate official investigations are under way into the fatal shooting
of a 13-year-old girl in Gaza by the Israeli army after soldiers testified
that their company commander "emptied his magazine" at her
after she had been shot and was presumed dead.
The army has already
admitted that the killing of Iman al-Hams in the town of Rafah a week
ago was a mistake and that her bag, which it says soldiers thought carried
explosives, contained school books.
Soldiers have come
forward to explain that her body was riddled with 20 bullets because
their immediate commander "confirmed the killing" by shooting
two bullets at her already prone body before withdrawing a short distance
and then firing a burst of automatic gunfire at the corpse.
The Judge Advocate
General, Brigadier General Avi Mandelblit, has instructed the military
police to launch a criminal investigation against the commander in the
Givati Brigade's crack Shaked Battalion as a result of the claim. Unusually,
the investigation was ordered even though the army inquiry is incomplete.
The move follows
interviews with soldiers serving in the company published in the Israeli
newspaper Yedhiot Ahronot. It quoted them as saying the commander should
have been stood down immediately after the incident. One soldier told
the newspaper: "The company CO who sprayed the girl with bullets
turned us all into vicious animals and besmirched us all ... If he is
not dismissed, we will not agree to serve under him." Another said
the commander had "desecrated the body".
According to figures
produced by 11 UN agencies, 24 Palestinians under the age of 17 have
been killed since 28 September when the army entered northern Gaza in
response to the firing by Palestinian militants of two Qassam rockets
which killed two Israeli children in Sderot. A nine-year-old girl was
among 11 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.
The investigations
opened as security sources told the newspaper Haaretz that the Prime
Minister, Ariel Sharon, had rejected a request from army commanders
to withdraw from the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp in northern
Gaza on the grounds that the fortnight-old operation "Days of Penitence"
was endangering troops and that militants had now removed rockets to
positions outside the camp.
Mr Sharon told the
Knesset at the opening of what promises to be a difficult winter session
for the government that it would be voting on 25 October on his plan
to withdraw some 7,500 settlers from Gaza.
The level of difficulty
was underlined last night when the legislature opposed by 45 to 33 a
routine motion noting Mr Sharon's speech. Although it does not threaten
Mr Sharon's administration, the defeat emphasised the strong opposition
to the plan from the extreme right of Israeli politics and from the
far right of his own Likud party, seven of whose members abstained last
night.