Tank Shell That Sprays Deadly Darts Killed Cameraman in Gaza, Say Doctors
GAZA - Bordered by lemon trees on one side and an olive grove on the other, the country lane leading to Joher Al Dik, where Fadel Shana was killed doing his job, was all but deserted yesterday afternoon. But two teenage boys from the Nusseirat refugee camp displayed half a dozen of the dull, black, inch-long darts which they said they had found among the cactus growing along the verge opposite where Mr Shana had parked his unarmoured SUV to film a tank on Wednesday afternoon. 
According to doctors who examined the body of the 23 -year-old Palestinian Reuters cameraman at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, it was controversial darts like those, flechettes, fired from an Israeli tank shell that explodes in the air, that caused his death. X-rays displayed to Reuters showed several of the flechettes embedded in the dead man’s chest and legs, and more were found in his flak jacket, clearly emblazoned, like his vehicle, with “TV” and “Press” signs.
Mr Shana, unmarried, and a talented and popular member of the award-winning, 15-strong Reuters team in the Gaza Strip, had been driving west along the normally quiet road when he and his soundman, Wafa Abu Mizyed, 25, decided to park their vehicle 200 metres or so short of Gaza’s main north-south Salahadin Road. They had been touring Gaza to report on the worst day of violence since early March.
A charred black patch yesterday marked the spot where the vehicle, its rear ripped to pieces by the blast, had been towed away.
Mr Shana set up his tripod and faced back east in the direction of the Israeli border to film a tank perhaps a kilometre and a half away across the fields. The last video from Mr Shana’s camera showed the tank opening fire. Two seconds later, after the shot raises dust around the tank’s gun, the tape goes blank - presumably marking the precise moment at which he was hit. Reuters reported yesterday that a frame-by-frame examination of the tape shows the shell exploding and dark shapes shooting out of it.
The Israeli military was silent last night on whether it planned to launch the “swift, honest, and impartial investigation” into Mr Shana’s death, urged by David Shlesinger, the editor-in-chief of Reuters News, who said the medical evidence underlined the case for such an inquiry. While expressing “sorrow” for Mr Shana’s death, a military official said the area was one in which there was “ongoing fighting against armed, extreme and dangerous terrorist organisations on a daily basis”. The presence of media, photographers and other uninvolved individuals in areas of warfare is extremely dangerous and poses a threat to their lives.” But Mr Shlesinger said: “The markings on Fadel Shana’s vehicle showed clearly and unambiguously that he was a professional journalist doing his duty. We and the military must work together urgently to understand why this tragedy took place and how similar incidents can be avoided in the future. This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report the news.”
The military would only say that all its weapons “are legal under international law”. Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a 2003 petition arguing that the use of flechettes as an anti-personnel weapon contravened a 1980 UN convention, but the Israeli human rights group Btselem said last night that flechettes violated international law and demanded a criminal investigation.
Mr Shana’s friend and colleague Wissam Nassar, also 23, a photographer with the Maan news agency, said yesterday that, alerted to reports of civilian casualties in central Gaza, he and two colleagues had driven south in the armoured car of photographer Mohammed Abed, of Agence France Presse.
“We parked the car at the corner [of the lane] and saw people looking east. We saw Wafa Abu Mizyed [who was injured by shrapnel in the blast] and he was saying ‘Fadel died’.” Mr Nassar added that before they managed to get to Mr Shana’s car there was an explosion perhaps 30 metres away from what he presumed was another tank shell, which had landed ahead of them to the east of the car.
“We all lay down in the road,” he said. “I thought at first I had been injured. There was a lot of smoke.” Eventually they reached Mr Shana’s car and found his body beside his mangled tripod.
The two teenage boys from Nusseirat, Tareq al-Bana, 16, and Mohammed Abu Hajaj, 19, said they had been there when Mr Shana had been killed by the explosion which also injured or killed several other Palestinians, including at least one teenager with a bicycle. They said some tyres had been burned in the lane but that there had been no shooting from Palestinians.
Mr Nassar said Mr Shana was a fine colleague “who always wanted to make an extra effort. He thought a lot about the future. He really wanted to be something in Reuters.” He had photographed Mr Shana last Friday when they met on duty outside a mosque where Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was speaking.
The picture shows a smiling man in sunglasses with stubble and hair down to his neck. Mr Nassar added: “He joked with me, saying keep those pictures; you may need them some day.”
© 2008 The Independent
Wow. So thankful that the Israeli Army is willing to use tanks main guns as giant shotguns to defend us from those horrible dangerous cameramen recording Imperialist aggression against civilians…
What ever happened to Lord grant me the strength to break my enemies teeth? That way the ‘enemy’ starves to death. Oh, that’s what the Jewish State is doing to the entire civilian population of Gaza. Testing WMDs on civilians this way guarentees another home made rocket excuse to continue bleeding Palestine. Sixty years of genocidal bloodletting should be way more than enough to mark the entire world’s doorposts for even this Angel of Death to Passover. Cruelty and avrice is covering the world in a deluge of blood and no Bird of Peace is in sight.
The flechette round, you might like to know, was invented by the USA during (or just before) the Vietnam War. Fired from 90mm guns on M-48 Patton tanks, it was used extensively in the ‘Nam as an anti-personnel weapon and a general “jungle-clearing” round.
History repeats its self again. When American troops attacked the Nazis in WWII, they were fired upon with weapons made by American companies that had invested heavily in Nazi Germany. Another “special relationship” was between the Zionists creating Israel and the Nazi regime. This can be read about in the book “The Transfer Agreement” by Edwin Black.
The moral pictures drawn for us then and now are false to the rotten core, and our ignorance of history is what in part causes us to place more faith in the propaganda, then in the shocking and horrible facts, such as chronicled in this excellent article.
So that’s where a fair amount of our tax money goes to Israel for — developing horrendous weapons to kill defenseless people.
It makes me ashamed to be an American that is aligned so closely with Israel.
Israel - the testing ground for US munitions and weapons of death on helpless civilians.
Should come in handy when the restless rabble here in the US start to riot over food prices and lack of representation.
Israel is a rogue state. It used cluster bombs in the unsuccessful Lebanon war, and now uses poisoned darts against defenseless journalists. Israeli leaders have no shame and no conscience! They will get theirs.
IDF (really IOF)The ‘most moral army in the world’ (REGD TM).
Just another common example of Zionist terrorism - nothing new here - killing journalists is the favorite hobby of the US and ‘Israel’ - state-sponsored terrorism at its worst, as practiced by fascists.
The Jewish Murderers Killed 8 More Children/Babies Yesterday.
‘Palestinian Pundit’ Baby Body Counts And other news from Palestine.
Israel: The Most Hated Nation On Earth. .
Why? Why? Persecuted? F* No; For Their Slimey ACTIONS.
How could one not hate that filthy country?
If the Pope knew about these atrocities he would have put an immediate stop to this. But unfortunately he is busy elsewhere reaching out to the Jewish community.
to the “special” Israeli Yemakh shmoy ve-zikhroy
zolst krenken in nakhes motif
to the “special” Israeli ____ To forget a name and efface its bearer completely from the Book of Life as well as the Book of Those Who Have Lived.
you should suffer in the midst of pleasure, and get everything you always wanted and suffer all the more for it.
Hey ‘Power Slave’ nice short list huh? Notice how they group well.
That tell you anything at all?
People who Shoot Children
People who Demolish Homes
People who Occupy Another’s Land
People who use Tanks against unarmed civilians
People who say They Are Chosen (Better Than My Children)
People who Run A Concentration Camp
People who stop Ambulances w/ Women, Children, to Die.
People who Torture Children
People who shoot missiles into crowds
People who every day for 60 years kill 8-9 defensless people
These “people,” These ‘Chosen’ Butchers, Are The Worst.
Thank You For Asking.
Cool list mikepeters — you could alway add something like hubris (affront to god), arrogance, and conceit, along with a little twist of history:
IT’S ALL BACKWARDS
They’ve never been provided God’s OPEN ENDED PROMISE
( ¿ what kind of dorky contract management is this ? )
Greetings Namaste:
“Release the four Angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
“And the four Angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to Kill a third of mankind.”
“I heard their number”
“Nevertheless, God was not pleased with them, their bodies were scattered over the desert.”
Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
What a wonderful world it could be. What a wonderful world it should be.
Cold-blooded-murder. Period.
Power S:
It isn’t hatred toward Jews it is hatred toward murder. Israel has occupied areas for over 40 years. I have some old news clips I was looking at and guess what the HEADLINES ARE THE SAME TODAY AS 20 , 30 YEARS AGO. It has to stop and America is guilty and Americans are even more for doing nothing.
OK AMERICA A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE CHANGE.
DO NOT vote for any person running for office that is NOT 100% America first and 100% America only. Is a member of any group that is pro any other country but America. Vote out the Libermans and the rest and maybe with time America maybe become a country you can be prood of again. Right now I can think about 5 different countries other than America I would pick to live in 5 times out of 5.
The really wonderful thing about religion is that no matter what version you believe in, you also believe that anyone else who is not a believer in your version is in error.
Only your group have the true story about God (or gods) and your god considers you special. Consequently, all non-members of your group are inferior.
Continuing this line of reasoning, the actions of any non-members which you disagree with are an affront to your god.
As you have a special relationship with your god, you can justify your actions by believing that you are doing his work in repressing those inferior unbelievers who do not share your religion.
Now if you are a leader within the group, it is easy to harness this chauvinism for base political ends, usually involving the theft of the property of those not sharing your groups religious beliefs and their removal from your vicinity.
There is nothing new here.
The ancients undoubtably did it.
The Crusades were a quest for land.
Pogroms in Europe used religion as a pretext for murder.
The Islamic expansion through the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
The Holocaust.
Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
The Islamo-Fascist terrorist attempts to create a new Caliphate.
The sooner that we see the threat to civilised society posed by power and land hungry leaders who harness religious obsessions of the gullible, the safer we will all be.
Perhaps if we just saw religions as what they are. Man made myths rather than revelations from supernatural beings. (Ra, Thor, Jehovah etc) we would be better at getting along with our fellow humans.
Religions are an approximation of who we (each group) think we might be
People are a manifestation of what God might be, if we’d only learn …
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
Israel=terrorist state!!!
R E A D — More in today’s CD update : Probe Sought of Whether Israel Targeted Media Crew
Namaste
Perhaps you all should talk with Israeli youth….they are travelers worldwide and all have been in the army.
Their view is different…they left Gaza and a full infrastructure. They got attacks and missiles in return. Most nations would have destroyed an enemy like that long ago.
the isreali “nazi” politicians and their “nazi” military are worse than HItler’s nazi ss. And i’m not an arab just an american who is sick of the way america’s politicians allow this from happening, using american made weapons to crucify and bully a people that can only fight back with stones. I hate Isreal and wish america would drop an atom bomb on it and get rid of the scum that pollutes the world. they are doing to the palastinians what Hitler did to them. Isreal wants to annialate them. but remember you nazi Isreali’s: what goes around comes around. your Karma will catch up with you one day. And i hope soon. You pieces of shit.
So how’s that (Arab) voting going on the GAZA issues?
Isn’t Reuters owned by a Saudi company? Or is it Egyptian?
You would think the Israelis would have learned a different lesson from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Oppressed, walled in, starved, hunted for sport by the Wehrmacht and the SS, the Jews fought back, for years, until they were finally beaten by vastly superior weaponry and manpower.
Oppressed peoples fight back, any way they can. The Nazis learned that in Poland, France and many other countries. France learned it in Algeria and Indo-China. We learned it in Viet Nam and should be learning it in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If the tables were turned, we would be fighting back against our oppressors, viciously and mercilessly until we were dead, or the occupiers were gone.
Power_Slave
Israel allows some Arabs to vote (the ones they couldn’t kill or kick out in 1948, but they’re working on it), and denies them rudimentary civil rights available to Jewish Israelis.
Are you happy to have the Jewish state in the same category as the other rogue states you list?
What a collection of criminals.
Ah yes, millenia of Jewish morality destroyed by this monster.
It’s been said “never get into a fight with someone who has nothing to loose.”