the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1172
(7/24/06 21:08) Reply
Ambulances fired on by Israel, says Red Cross
www.smh.com.auHome
Ambulances fired on by Israel, says Red Cross
Correspondent in Tyre and agencies
July 25, 2006
The Red Cross in Tyre said that five of its volunteers and three patients were wounded when Israeli aircraft attacked two ambulances on Sunday night. The attack took place near Qana when an ambulance from Tyre arrived to evacuate three patients from the border town of Tibnin.
The drivers said that two guided missiles were fired at each ambulance. Three patients - a woman, her son and grandson - were all re-injured, the son losing his leg to a direct hit from one of the kinetic-energy anti-tank missiles.
The Red Cross has now been forced to abandon all attempts to rescue wounded from Tibnin.
More than 369 Lebanese have died since the fighting began on July 12, almost all of them non-combatants. Twenty Israeli combat personnel have died and 17 Israeli civilians have been killed.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1173
(7/24/06 21:11) Reply
Israeli shell hits UN post
Israeli shell hits UN post in S. Lebanon
Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:22 PM BST
BEIRUT (Reuters) - An Israeli tank shell hit a position run by U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon on Monday, wounding four Ghanaian soldiers, a spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said.
The four soldiers were evacuated to a UNIFIL hospital at the border town of Naqoura, Milos Strugar said in a statement. The shell also caused extensive damage to the position near the village of Rmeish, he said.
Shrapnel from tank shells fired from the Israeli side seriously wounded an Indian soldier last week.
In 1996, during Israel's Grapes of Wrath campaign in Lebanon, an Israeli jet bombed a UNIFIL compound in the southern village of Qana, killing 106 civilians sheltering inside.
UNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major incursion into southern Lebanon and has been there ever since. The United Nations has called for a bigger, better armed and more robust international force in the area.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1175
(7/25/06 14:28) Reply
Re: Israeli shell hits UN post
Israel Hits U.N. Post; Casualties Reported
Jul 25 5:10 PM US/Eastern
BEIRUT, Lebanon
A U.N. observer post was hit by an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon Tuesday and there were casualties, a U.N. spokesman said. He could not specify how many or their condition.
[Four UN Peace Observers, 4, are now CONFIRMED killed]
A bomb directly impacted the building and shelter of an Indian patrol base from the observer force in the town of Khiyam near the eastern end of the border with Israel, said Milos Struger, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
"There are casualties among the observers. UNIFIL immediately dispatched a rescue and medical team and they're currently on the location but unable to clear the rubble," Struger told The Associated Press late Tuesday.
He also said there were 14 other incidents of firing close to this position from the Israeli side Tuesday afternoon. "The firing continued even during the rescue operation," he said.
Since Israel launched a massive military offensive against Lebanon and Hezbollah guerrillas July 12, an international civilian employee working with UNIFIL and his wife have been killed in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern port city of Tyre.
Five UNIFIL soldiers and one military observer have also been wounded, Struger said.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1176
(7/26/06 16:39) Reply
USA Backs War Criminals
Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 July 2006, 21:34 GMT 22:34 UK
Israel troops 'ignored' UN plea
The UN deaths have provoked an international outcry
UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says.
The post was hit by a precision-guided missile after six hours of shelling, diplomats familiar with the probe say.
More than 400 Lebanese and 42 Israelis have died in two weeks of conflict.
In other developments:
More than 300 people - mainly US and Australian citizens - who had been caught in the fighting in southern Lebanon are due to leave from Tyre on a Canadian ferry on Wednesday evening
The four unarmed UN observers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, died after their UN post in the town of Khiam was hit by an Israeli air strike on Tuesday.
The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop.
A senior Irish soldier working for the UN forces had warned the Israelis six times that their bombardment was endangering the lives of UN staff, Ireland's foreign ministry said.
Had Israel responded to the requests, "rather than deliberately ignoring them", the observers would still be alive, a diplomat familiar with the report said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has expressed "deep regrets" over the deaths.
Israel is conducting an investigation into the incident.
It has rejected accusations made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the targeting of the UN position was "deliberate".
White House spokesman Tony Snow said "something went really wrong" to cause the deaths, but also said there was no reason to suggest the bombing was deliberate.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1177
(7/26/06 16:46) Reply
Red Cross workers angry at violation of humanitarian law
Wednesday 26th July Red Cross workers angry at violation of humanitarian law
July 25, 2006
Tyre, Lebanon - Three dirty bandages hide the worst of Zainab Jawad's swollen and bloodied nose. Her arm - fractured in two places - is strapped to her chest.
Stretched out on a hospital bed, the 8-year-old squeezes shut her brown eyes as she fights back sobs at Tyre's Najem Hospital.
On Sunday, Israeli bombs destroyed her family's home in the southern Lebanese village of Ayta Chaeb.
Then rockets hit the car as they fled.
"What I remember most is the sound, the sound of the planes and I was scared because I thought there were so many," she says. "I fell asleep last night, but all I could hear in my sleep were planes."
Zainab's aunt is in the next bed. Her mother, Usra, and 4-year-old brother, Mohammed, are in a room nearby. The boy's leg is in a cast to his hip. His mother's leg is in traction after steel pins were installed in several places.
When the bombing started, Usra and her three sisters fled with the two children. They were headed for Basariya, north of Tyre, but 3km from the port city rockets hit their car. Two sisters, both teachers, were killed.
Jawad Najem, a surgeon at the hospital, says patients admitted on Sunday were burn cases that resulted from phosphorus incendiary weapons.
The Geneva Conventionsban using white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations and in air attacks against military forces in civilian areas. The Israeli military says its use of weapons "conforms with international law".
It also says it warned all residents to leave areas that have been targeted.
"The IDF (army) operates solely against terrorist organisations and terror infrastructure. The responsibility for endangering (the) civilian population rests on the Hezbollah terror organisation," the military said in a statement.
Najem said he had also treated a 14-year-old boy, Mahmoud Sarour, for phosphorus burns to his face. His 8-month-old sister, Maryam, also suffered similar burns to her neck and hands when an Israeli rocket hit her family's car just 1km from the hospital.
The children were with their father, mother and other family members when their car was hit by an Israeli missile. The father died instantly.
The Sarour family were evacuated yesterday from Tyre on the Princesa Marrisa, a ferry chartered by Germany to rescue expatriates trapped in the south. They were taken to Larcana, Cyprus.
The Sarours were taken by taxi to the Tyre port because the Lebanese Red Cross had suspended operations outside the city proper because Israeli jets on Sunday blasted two ambulances with rockets, said Ali Deebe, a Red Cross spokesperson in Tyre.
The rocket, Deebe said, had wounded six ambulance workers and three civilians - an 11- year-old boy, an elderly woman and a man.
"One of the rockets hit right in the middle of the big red cross that was painted on top of the ambulance.
This is a clear violation of humanitarian law, of international law," he said.
Kassem Shalan, one of the ambulance workers, said nine ambulance workers had been hurt in the attack.
Amateur video provided by an ambulance worker confirmed Deebe's account of damage to the ambulances, showing one large hole and several smaller ones in the roof of one ambulance and a very large hole in the roof of the second ambulance. Both vehicles were destroyed.
Israeli rockets have been hitting around Najem Hospital for most of the past two weeks, said Inaya Haydar, the hospital's director of nursing.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1178
(7/26/06 20:03) Reply
Cdn UN peacekeeper described constant bombing
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2006
Cdn UN peacekeeper described constant bombing in days before deadly strike
OTTAWA (CP) - Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, or "Maj. H.v.K." as he signed his e-mails, loved his work as a career soldier with a gusto that was his trademark.
Family, friends and former colleagues prayed for the best and braced for the worst as they waited for word on the UN observer's fate in one of the most precarious regions in the Middle East.
The worst was all but confirmed Wednesday, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Hess-von Kruedener is missing and presumed dead after an Israeli bomb flattened a clearly marked UN post in southern Lebanon. The blast Tuesday killed three other unarmed observers.
Hess-von Kruedener, believed to be in his mid-40s, leaves behind his wife Cynthia and two grown children, a daughter and stepson, said a National Defence spokesman.
Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said Wednesday night through a spokesman that she wants Canadians to pray for her husband.
The incident is shaping up to be a major international embarrassment for Israeli leaders, who say the observer station was hit by accident.
But a preliminary UN report released to The Associated Press says the peacekeepers called the Israeli military 10 times in the hours leading up to the fatal strike, asking them to stop nearby bombings.
The debacle did not appear to soften Harper's support for Israel's powerful show of force.
"I think this event is obviously a terrible tragedy," he said. "But that doesn't change the right of a country to defend itself against terrorists and violent attacks."
[The new Prime Minister of Canada, 120 days old, is an Ultra Right Wing neo-Conservative that parrots the Bush regime, he, like the neo-Conservatives in the USA are about to be wiped off the political landscape, and their supporters will soon be back under the debris from which they crawled.
Until then one can only scream in horror and anger at how many they will murder in the next year or two, only G-d can say, but rom the past and the present foretell of many many more illegal murders to come from these rougue governments. The President of the United States and Israel will stand proudly [sic] side by side with the Prime Minister of Canada at the Hague as they are convicted of Crimes Against Humanity]
Canadian officials will work with the UN and the Israeli government to find out what happened, Harper added. He also questioned why the UN didn't pull its observers out of what he called a virtual war zone.
[Yes, Stephen Harpercrit, as he's known here, actually laid blame on the dead UN Peacekeepers]
Hess-von Kruedener described in a July 18 e-mail to CTV the growing chaos surrounding his UN post in Khiam, a dusty village about 10 kilometres from where the Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian borders intersect.
The patrol base has been repeatedly caught in deadly crossfire since it was built as an observer post in 1972.
"What I can tell you is this: we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both artillery and aerial bombing," he wrote.
"The closest artillery has landed within two metres of our position and the closest 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) aerial bomb has landed 100 metres from our patrol base."
Hess-von Kruedener had been an infantry officer with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry for 20 years.
He served in Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and twice in Bosnia before joining the UN Truce and Supervision Organization last October.
He had three months remaining on the one-year mission.
His job, along with other international members of Observer Group Lebanon's Team Sierra, was to report any violations of the now-abandoned ceasefire along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Harry Bloom, eastern vice-president of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Association, spent a year in the early 1970s patrolling the exact terrain where Hess-von Kruedener served.
Bloom, now retired at 66, said he wasn't surprised by news that an Israeli bomb had hit the post - and he doesn't believe it was an accident.
"I agree with (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan's comment that it seemed to be an intentional hit. It would have to be.
The outposts are so well-identified with blue and white paint and flags.
A pilot cannot mistake that outpost for anything else."
[Let alone the FACT that it was a "laser guided precision" bomb, that means that the target had to be "painted" with a laser to guide the bomb to its target by computer and Global Positioning]
Bloom described repeated "altercations" with Israeli forces when he was stationed there.
"They [ISRAEL] would fire from behind us, knowing that returned fire would land in our outpost. So to me, it's not a surprise. Not at all."
He also explained why he thought Israel would attack unarmed UN observers.
"The UN is no great friend as far as the Israelis are concerned," Bloom said in an interview from his home in Orleans, Ont., east of Ottawa.
"When the Israelis do anything on that ceasefire line, the UN is there. The Israelis don't necessarily like someone watching them."
Regimental Warrant Officer Pete Palmer, based with the Princess Pats in Edmonton, recalled Hess-von Kruedener as "one of the most fit, gung-ho types of soldiers."
"He was demanding of both professionalism and knowing your job, and also being able to lead by example. He was in excellent physical condition."
Palmer and Hess-von Kruedener went on gruelling training exercises together when they were stationed in Winnipeg in 1991, he said.
"He performed his duties well."
In Beirut, Lt.-Col. Shane Brennan, the army head of the Canadian evacuation mission, recalled Hess-von Kruedener's airborne exploits.
"He was a jumper. He worked in the parachute training centre for a while. It was the last place he worked before this mission."
"He was always very fit. He had a positive attitude, but he was not afraid to speak his mind. He was a bit of a character who was always pushing the limits of what he was doing."
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1186
(7/29/06 12:28) Reply
UN deaths 'threaten peacekeeping'
Last Updated: Saturday, 29 July 2006, 11:09 GMT 12:09 UK
UN deaths 'threaten peacekeeping'
The UN said it wanted to "get to the bottom" of what happened.
The UN has warned the deaths of four of its personnel in southern Lebanon may deter countries from contributing to a future peacekeeping force in the area.
UN deputy chief Mark Malloch-Brown said they accepted Israel's apology for the losses to Israeli fire, but still had "serious concerns" about what happened.
The UN has called for a three-day truce to let aid enter Lebanon, but Israel has rejected the request.
The UN says children, elderly and disabled have been left stranded and supplies are "running out very, very fast" in southern Lebanon after two weeks of fighting.
Lebanon has said an Israeli attack on fuel tanks at a power plant has created the biggest environmental disaster the Mediterranean region has known
A bridge has been destroyed in the eastern Bekaa valley as the Israeli air force continues its bombardment of Lebanon
.
The UN says some 600 people have been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon, of which about a third were children.
Fifty-one Israelis, including [READ: "Only"] at least 18 civilians, have been killed, mostly by Hezbollah rockets.
'Serious threat'
Israel said Tuesday's deaths in a strike on a UN base were an accident - but UN officials said they had contacted Israel a dozen times before the bombing and asked them to stop firing, which Israel did not.
Mr Malloch-Brown told the BBC the UN "continued to harbour serious concerns about what went on in the Israeli military forces that day".
He said the losses posed a "very serious threat to the whole concept of neutral peacekeeping.
"Peacekeeping is a dangerous business and we depend on the support of the international community," he said.
"When people die it is not a simple accident to be brushed away."
The UN wants the injured to be evacuated during a truce.
The UN Security Council issued a statement voicing "shock and distress" at the deaths, after the US blocked calls for harsher criticism of Israel. [Shame]
Mr Malloch-Brown said Washington would have to "think hard" about the consequences of its move for the recruitment of an international force.
BBC NEWS: BBC
Edited by: XSha Tell at: 7/29/06 12:29
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