JERUSALEM - Photographic evidence has emerged that proves that Israel has been using controversial white phosphorus shells during its offensive in Gaza, despite official denials by the Israel Defence Forces.
There is also evidence that the rounds have injured Palestinian civilians, causing severe burns. The use of white phosphorus against civilians is prohibited under international law.
JERUSALEM - Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.
The bombing was relentless. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos. That's a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world.
"In the area of Xieng Khoang, the place of my birth, there was health, good earth, and fine weather," one survivor, a 33-year-old man, recalls of that period.
There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg.
Twenty people were killed last night in a missile strike by CIA Predator drone
aircraft inside Pakistan amid reports that Washington is intensifying
its aerial bombardment of the country after being forced to back away
from plans to send in ground forces.
The attack -
the 18th in the past few weeks - targeted what was described as a
"militant compound" close to Wana, the main town of the South
Waziristan tribal agency that is the fiefdom of top jihadi commander
Baitullah Mehsud - a man closely linked to al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.
WASHINGTON - The present U.S.
policy in Afghanistan of using airstrikes to target local Taliban
leaders was rejected by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in early
2004 as certain to turn the broader population against the U.S.
presence.
