The military now says that it fired six shells on to and around the beach where Huda Ghalia's family died, with one of them falling about 100 yards away, but by coincidence a mine planted by Hamas exploded in the same area at the same time. The military backs its claim with analysis of aerial photographs, shrapnel and what it is says is intelligence that Hamas has mined Gaza beaches to stop Israeli forces landing, although it is not known to have used such a tactic before.

But a former Pentagon offical sent by the New York-based Human Rights Watch to investigate the death of the family has concluded that there is little doubt they were killed by an Israeli shell. "All the evidence points to the fact that it couldn't have been a mine," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon expert on battlefields who led the US military's battle damage assessment team in Kosovo and worked for its intelligence wing, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky not explosives under the sand."

posted by Somebody @ 6:20 PM Permanent Link

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