Posted on 04/14/2002 3:45:08 AM PDT by Gorons
(12:10) IDF: Bodies of dead Palestinians booby-trapped
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April, 14 2002 |
Army forces are continuing mopping-up operations in the northern West Bank city of Jenin at this hour.
There are reports of intermittent sniping at soldiers, Israel Radio said.
IDF sources said many of the bodies of Palestinians killed in fighting over the last two weeks were booby-trapped and that was one of the reasons journalists and Red Cross teams were not allowed into the camp until this morning.
The curfew has also been lifted for the time being so camp residents can stock up on foodstuffs.
Reporters on the scene report seeing no bodies strewn in the steets of the city, contrary to earlier Palestinians reports of an Israeli massacre.
There were, however, several media reports attesting to significant damage to homes, building and infrstructure.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said at this morning's weekly cabinet session that the army had carefully checked casualty reports and said the bodies of dozens of armed Palestinians had been found by troops on Friday, and not humdreds, as Palestinians had been reporting.
He said that 23 out of 26 Palestinian casualties discovered were wearing uniforms and were armed.
"We did not bury a single body, certainly not in mass graves,' Ben-Eliezer said, according to Israel Radio.
"We suggested that the families [of the dead] bury the bodies, with the assistance of the Red Cross, but they refused," he said.
The IDF Spokesman, in a statement released a few minutes ago, categorically dismissed the Palestinian claims, adding that the burial arrangements would be coordinated with local Palestinian officials.
Meanwhile, Palestinians said that soldiers had killed local Islamic Jihad head Abu Jandal earlier today.
Army sources have not confirmed the report.
At the same time, a panel of three High Court justices is taking up three petitions concerned with the disposition of Palestinians killed in gun battles with soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp since the launching of Operation Defense Shield.
Court President Aharon Barak on Friday issued an interim injunction ordering the army to refrain from removing the bodies until a ruling is issued. In addition, the court asked the State Attorney's Office to respond to charges the army has begun burying bodies in mass graves.
I wonder where did they get this idea? See the info on booby-trapped British sergeants or booby-trapped car in a market in Jerusalem . There were many more acts like those.
Yitzhak Shamir, Menahem Begin and other did not give the good example.
I don't know if they want us involved ---I think I agree with the second sentence that we should back off and allow Israel free action ---we should have done that years ago.
THE FAMILIES OF THE TERRORISTS DID NOT WANT TO TOUCH THE BODIES FOR BURIAL EITHER, MAYBE THEY KNEW SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T KNOW, TARAKOTCHI....
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Tarakotchi: "IDF sources said many of the bodies of Palestinians killed in fighting over the last two weeks were booby-trapped and that was one of the reasons journalists and Red Cross teams were not allowed into the camp until this morning."
Yeah, right. They were just protecting the journalists (the ones they didn't shoot). Like they would be disturbing the bodies and triggering the booby traps.
This also becomes a convenient excuse for their war-crime of not allowing the Red Cross in to treat the wounded.
The Red Cross is a terrorist organization; the Israelis would be fools to let terrorists use the Red Cross/Red Crescent as cover for more attacks. (But of course, you know that, better than I do!) On the other hand, if the bodies really were booby-trapped, it would be poetic justice for Red Crescent "medics" to handle them.
How do you keep a straight face, while pulling off the scam of charging Jews with "war crimes," but no Arabs?
Yeah, right. Seventeen year old girls strapped with explosives blowing themselves up: yes. Booby-trapped bodies: impossible.
Well, if the bodies were booby-trapped, I would refuse to bury my loved one, too.
csap 14 (also 22 & 25)(mistakenly, to LarryLied): "Name...a name of a journalist that was shot, and you have me on your side."
You guys don't get out much do you? Possibly you get all your news from the mostly pro-Israeli selection posted on FR.
"Freelance photographer Raffaele Ciriello, 42, who was shot several times in the chest, became the first foreign journalist killed in the conflict. He had worked in many world hotspots.
A colleague who was with him when he was killed said Ciriello was shot by Israeli soldiers who apparently mistook him for one of several Palestinian gunmen standing nearby."
"An Italian photographer [Ciriello] was killed today by Israeli tank fire, witnesses said, and a French photographer and an Egyptian TV correspondent were shot at in separate incidents in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
...
In a third incident, a 35-year-old Egyptian TV correspondent, Tareq Abdel Jaber, said Israeli soldiers fired at least five shots at his car, clearly marked with big TV signs, when he and a cameraman were driving in Ramallah. Jaber said one bullet struck him in the right side, but was stopped by a flak jacket.
...
On Tuesday, Ciriello was among about 40 journalists in a Ramallah hotel that came under Israeli tank fire. No one was injured and the army said it was returning fire from a gunman on the upper floors of the hotel. Journalists in the hotel at the time said there was no gunman.
Reporters without Borders say 40 journalists have been wounded by gunfire since September 2000."
Jerusalem Post, March 13, 2002
"Meanwhile, other [U.S.] officials said they found troubling the fact that soldiers had killed the photographer, Ciriello, and wounded a French journalist.
...
Ann Cooper, executive-director of the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists, said most of the documented cases where Israeli soldiers wound journalists are unintentional. But she said six cases were questionable, instances where evidence suggested the journalists might have been targeted deliberately."
Houston Chronicle, March 14, 2002
"In separate incidents in Ramallah on Wednesday, an Egyptian television journalist was lightly wounded and a French journalist shot in the leg. France's Foreign Ministry protested to Israel.
...
'It is...utterly unacceptable and a tragedy that journalists were injured and killed by IDF (army) bullets in Ramallah earlier today,' U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told reporters, criticising the army's offensive in the city."
"Trying to reach Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's besieged West Bank headquarters, [TV Producer Charles] Enderlin and his TV France 2 crew were turned back at an Israeli checkpoint. Before leaving, they tried to film the soldiers but were ordered to stop.
'Show me a written order that I cannot film here,' the producer demanded. 'Instead of a paper, you're going to get a bullet in your camera,' snarled an Israeli reservist, raising his automatic rifle.
After more bickering, the producer turned his back and headed toward his car.
Then came the reservist's parting shot. A bullet sliced through the air between Enderlin and his cameraman at chest level.
As Israel wages its biggest military campaign in the West Bank in 35 years, journalists trying to cover it are running up against the ultimate roadblock--Israeli bullets fired at them, often without warning. Veteran correspondents and a media watchdog group say the restrictions are the tightest they have ever seen here and are meant to conceal what the Israelis are doing in reoccupied Palestinian cities.
At least 20 journalists have come under Israeli fire since the offensive began March 29, according to the Paris-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. In most cases, the fire apparently is meant as warning shots, but five journalists have been wounded, including one American, Anthony Shadid of the Boston Globe.
'It's a form of nonverbal communication, their way of saying, "Please leave the area at once," ' said Cameron Barr, a Christian Science Monitor reporter who has been shot at twice in recent days. 'They want to get a message across. Believe me, I left with alacrity. It was an extremely effective message.'
A convoy of correspondents got the message Friday when it approached Arafat's compound in Ramallah and came under attack from two Israeli army jeeps. Without warning, one of the jeeps rammed a clearly marked CNN vehicle, and soldiers threw several stun grenades. As the convoy retreated, soldiers fired plastic bullets, chipping the CNN car's reinforced glass windows.
Five journalists from Agence France-Presse and Spanish television got the message Sunday as they walked into the West Bank town of Yatta wearing flak jackets bearing the letters 'TV' in big white tape and waving a white flag. They retreated under Israeli gunfire.
And journalists who stayed in Ramallah after Israel declared it a closed military zone got the message all last week. Israeli snipers took potshots at their hotel, and passing tanks fired into the air.
'The Israeli army is knowingly targeting journalists in a deliberate policy of intimidation,' Robert Menard, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders, said Sunday. 'The Israelis want a news blackout so they can work in a vacuum and do as they like.' "
"Journalists Are Kept at Bay by Israeli Bullets", Richard Boudreaux, LA Times, March 8, 2002
Know where he is? Jerusalem.
Israeli controlled Jerusalem.
Every Arab liar from that area comes on the air through the facilities of the Jews who "attempt to hide the news".
What other nation gives their enemies such access?
"[U.S. reporter Anthony] Shadid said he believed the shot, which struck him in the shoulder, was fired by an Israeli soldier because the area where the incident occurred, near Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, was under 'total Israeli military control and had been for days. It is difficult to imagine that a Palestinian gunman could have made it in the area for that long.'"
"Shadid was shot in the shoulder despite wearing a flak jacket that clearly marked him out as a member of the press, according to reports.
...
In an earlier incident a Palestinian cameraman working for an Egyptian based TV company, Carlos Handal, was shot in the mouth and wounded.
...
Meanwhile, journalists from a number of organisations - including the Guardian - have protested about the lack of freedom of movement for journalists.
The BBC yesterday protested to Israel after its correspondent Orla Guerin was pinned down by Israeli gunfire."
Why don't they just send a few Palestinian prisoners in to collect the bodies?
What?? Nobody wants to GO?? What a pity.
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