Injured Palestinian children at al-Najar hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, following an Israeli military strike on 1 August. (Eyad Al Baba / APA images) Friday turned into yet another day of horror for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel committed massacres and atrocities claiming the lives of at least 100 people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Friday was meant to be the first day of a three-day “humanitarian ceasefire” announced on Thursday evening by the United Nations and the United States. The short-lived ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 8am local time on Friday morning. Predictably, the United States has blamed Hamas for violating the ceasefire by killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third, whom Israel named as Hadar Goldin. Hamas and its military wing the Qassam Brigades deny any knowledge of the missing soldier. Who really broke the ceasefire? And why did Israeli forces shell the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah so indiscriminately on Friday, slaughtering dozens of people? Could it have been in order to kill the captured soldier to prevent him becoming a valuable bargaining chip in the hands of the Palestinian resistance? Israel has long had a murky procedure called the Hannibal Directive that some interpret as an order to do whatever it takes to prevent a soldier’s capture, even if it means killing him in the process.
Tag: soldier
An Afghan parliamentary investigation team has implicated up to 20 US troops in the massacre of 16 civilians in Kandahar early on Sunday morning. It contradicts NATO’s account that insists one rogue soldier was behind the slaughter. The team of Afghan lawmakers has spent two days collating reports from witnesses, survivors and inhabitants of the villages where the tragedy took place. “We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups,” investigator Hamizai Lali told Afghan News. Lali also said their investigations led them to believe 15 to 20 US soldiers had been involved in the killings. He appealed to the international community to ensure that the responsible parties were brought to justice, stressing the Afghan parliament would not rest until the killers were prosecuted.
KABUL (Reuters) – A U.S. soldier accused of shooting dead 16 Afghan civilians has been flown out of Afghanistan, officials said, as Washington attempted to calm seething anger over a massacre that raised serious questions…