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Civilian Toll in Israel-Gaza Clashes Comes Under Scrutiny In Strike That Killed 5 Children, Israel Said It Took Out Gaza Militant. Now It Isn’t Sure.
(about 11 hours later)
GAZA CITY — Residents say the airstrike came this week without warning: With fighting raging between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants throughout Gaza, two loud blasts destroyed a home in central Gaza, killing eight members of the family in a split second. DEIR El-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Ismail al-Swarka was shaken from slumber after midnight on Thursday by what sounded like four missile blasts. Then he heard his neighbors screaming. What he found outside was horrifying: Eight of his relatives, including five children, had been killed in an airstrike, with several more badly wounded.
Abdelhaj Musleh, a neighbor, said many children lived in the house in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah that was struck on Thursday. “If there had been a warning, no one would have waited for this death and destruction,” he added. As the sky brightened into morning, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted on Twitter the photo of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander it said had been killed in the strike, which occurred just hours before a cease-fire ended two intense days of fighting between Israel and the militant group.
Israel has claimed victory in its latest battle against Gaza militants, a clash set off by the Israeli military’s killing of an Islamic Jihad commander. But its tactics of carrying out airstrikes on private homes thought to be of harboring militants could once again come under scrutiny over the civilian death toll. But Islamic Jihad says the man in the photo was actually a different commander from Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, who is still alive — and that the victims of the attack in Deir El-Balah, near the center of the coastal enclave, were all civilians.
On Friday, the Israeli army said it would investigate the “unexpected” harm to civilians in the Gaza strike. On Friday, Israel’s military backtracked on its earlier claim and said it had begun an investigation into the harm to civilians in the Gaza strike.
Palestinian militants also have come under international criticism for firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilian areas. Gaza health officials said 16 civilians were among the 34 Palestinians killed in the two-day round of combat, which began when Israel assassinated an Islamic Jihad commander early Tuesday, and escalated as the militant group responded with hundreds of rockets aimed at cities and towns across southern and central Israel. There were no Israeli fatalities.
A truce announced early Thursday appeared to be breaking down less than 24 hours later, as Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza overnight Friday after a series of Palestinian rocket attacks. Among the 34 people killed in the two-day conflict, 16 were civilians, including two 7-year-old boys and two toddlers, according to human rights investigators. Israel’s military asserted that it was conducting its strikes with precision, and it seemed that way at first: The leader targeted on Tuesday, Baha Abu al-Ata, was killed when a missile hit his third-floor bedroom. His wife was also killed, but their children, in another room, survived. Israel also pointed repeatedly to airstrikes that it said had killed militants in the act of firing or preparing to fire rockets but had kept collateral damage to a minimum.
But the military says civilian casualties are unavoidable in Gaza’s teeming neighborhoods, where militants often fire rockets from residential areas. Israel accuses militants of using civilians, including their own relatives, as human shields against retaliatory strikes.
The eight al-Swarka family members killed appear to have accounted for half the civilian death toll in one devastating strike.
The Israeli military continued to insist on Friday that it had struck “an Islamic Jihad military infrastructure” in the Deir el-Balah attack. “According to the information available” at the time, it said in a statement, “no civilians were expected to be harmed as a result.”
Initial information, the military said, “showed that an Islamic Jihad operative was killed in the strike,” apparently the commander of a rocket unit, which it said explained the Twitter post by its Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee.
But doubts about that information have prompted an investigation into the victim’s “identity, as well as the harm caused to civilians by the strike,” the military said.
Since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, Israel has fought three wars and dozens of skirmishes against Islamic militant groups. While the wars have inflicted heavy damage on Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group, hundreds of civilians have also died in Israeli airstrikes.Since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, Israel has fought three wars and dozens of skirmishes against Islamic militant groups. While the wars have inflicted heavy damage on Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group, hundreds of civilians have also died in Israeli airstrikes.
The high civilian death toll has drawn heavy international criticism, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened a preliminary investigation into Israel’s battlefield tactics. Israel has rejected the criticism, saying it takes numerous precautions to prevent unnecessary civilian casualties.The high civilian death toll has drawn heavy international criticism, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened a preliminary investigation into Israel’s battlefield tactics. Israel has rejected the criticism, saying it takes numerous precautions to prevent unnecessary civilian casualties.
It says its targets are based on sophisticated intelligence and cleared by legal advisers and other experts, and that it often warns inhabitants to evacuate before their homes are struck. It says it has fine-tuned its guided missiles, delivering small payloads that minimize damage beyond the precise target. It says its targets are based on sophisticated intelligence and cleared by legal advisers and other experts, and that it often warns inhabitants to evacuate before their homes are struck.
“Our operations against the Islamic Jihad were very accurate, very deliberate, based on the highest level of intelligence that we have,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters on Thursday after the cease-fire was declared. Palestinian militants also have been denounced for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas.
“One of the key considerations was and remains to limit to the greatest extent possible collateral damage and the effect on noncombatants,” he added. On Friday afternoon, it was hard to see the remains of any structure, let alone infrastructure, at the site of the Thursday airstrike. All that was left of the al-Swarka family’s two homes, which had been about 50 yards apart, were shards of two tin shacks strewn across giant craters in the sand.
The latest round of fighting began early Tuesday, when an Israeli airstrike killed Baha Abu al-Ata, a senior Islamic Jihad commander who Israel said was responsible for numerous rocket attacks and was planning a deadly infiltration operation into Israel. The 4 a.m. missile strike hit the top-floor apartment in Gaza City where he was sleeping, also killing his wife, Asmaa Abu al-Ata. Neighbors told The Associated Press that an Islamic Jihad commander had lived in one of the destroyed homes, but that he wasn’t home at the time of the airstrike.
Colonel Conricus said Israel had been following Mr. Abu al-Ata for 10 days but had held off attacking him sooner because he routinely surrounded himself with crowds of civilians for protection. But Ismail al-Swarka, the brother of one of those killed, gave a different account.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a group of Israeli soldiers to congratulate them on what he called a successful mission. “Our enemies got the message,” he said. “We can reach anyone, even in their beds.” One of the destroyed homes, he said, belonged to Rasmi Abu Malhous, who sometimes used the surname al-Swarka, the name of their populous Bedouin tribe. He received a police officer’s salary from the Palestinian Authority, though like many others on the payroll of the authority, idled years ago in Gaza for political reasons, he did not actually put on a uniform and go to work.
Such airstrikes can be permissible under international law, depending on the threat posed by the target and whether the damage to civilians is “proportional” to the military gain, said Omar Shakir, the country director of Human Rights Watch. One of Mr. Abu Malhous’s two wives, Mariam, was killed, Ismail said; the other, Wissam, survived. Three of his children were killed.
“Too often civilians pay the price for political brinkmanship by states and armed group,” Mr. Shakir said. “We’ve seen several rounds of fighting now in Gaza where civilians have lost their lives or had their property damaged and faced harrowing circumstances as the result of unlawful attacks by both parties.” In the other home lived Mohammad and Yousra al-Swarka, Ismail’s sister.
Palestinian militants also have been denounced for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas. The Israeli military said dozens of the rockets this week had been misfired and landed in Gaza, with one believed to have damaged the offices of the International Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian watchdog group. Mohammad works for Palestinian Islamic Jihad but in a civilian capacity, the group said, mediating disputes between families and performing other social functions.
The group stopped short of criticizing the militants and called for an investigation of the incident. “Why are the children killed if the Israeli army has a problem with someone?” asked Dawood Shihab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman.
In the case of the airstrike in Deir el-Balah, neighbors said an Islamic Jihad commander lived in the home that was destroyed. The commander, however, was not home and had apparently gone into hiding. Yousra was killed in the blast, her brother said, along with two of the family’s six children.
Instead, his brother Rasmi Abu Malhous, 45, was killed, along with both of their wives and five children under the age of 13. They included his 7-year-old son and two nephews, ages 2 and 3. Ismail al-Swarka said the Israelis gave no warning before firing on his relatives’ homes. After he rushed outside after the airstrike, he said he was disoriented by what he found. “It was unrecognizable,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.” He found one nephew’s body at the edge of a crater. Then a neighbor stumbled across an adult’s body.
The neighbors, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to anger the family, said Rasmi Abu Malhous had not involved in any militant activity. The home virtually disintegrated in the blast, leaving a large crater with kitchenware, pillows and mattresses strewn about. Neighbors dug out eight bodies and tried to salvage school backpacks and clothes. “It was my sister,” he said. “I helped dig her body out of the sand.”
“When we came, we did not recognize where the house was standing,” said Mr. Musleh, the neighbor. “The airstrike intentionally targeted civilians.” Mohammad al-Swarka remained in critical condition on Friday at a local hospital.
Israel argues that civilian casualties are inevitable in Gaza’s densely populated urban environment. Militants often fire rockets from crowded residential areas, drawing Israeli retaliatory strikes, and Israel accuses the militants of using civilians as human shields. Ismail al-Swarka said his brother-in-law was also a goatherd and owned some chickens and a donkey cart. The smaller animals were blown to bits. The donkey was injured but survived.
Colonel Conricus, the military spokesman, said he had no information about the particular airstrike. But he defended the attacks on private homes, saying that Islamic Jihad commanders used their residences to store weapons or as command and control centers, making them legitimate military targets. Iyad Abuheweila reported from Deir el-Balah and David M. Halbfinger from Jerusalem.