Densely populated area targeted

Israeli forces pursue Hamas fighters deep inside Gaza City

Ibrahim Barzak and Christopher Torchia, The Associated Press; sidebar by Jason Keyser

Densely populated area targeted — The Journal News, 12 January 2009 — The Journal News · White Plains, New York · 12 January 2009

Transcribed from the clipping

“IN FOCUS · CONFLICT IN GAZA STRIP

Densely populated area targeted

Israeli forces pursue Hamas fighters deep inside Gaza City GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli ground forces made their deepest foray yet yesterday into Gaza’s most populated area, with tanks rolling into residential neighborhoods and infantry fighting urban warfare in streets and buildings with Hamas militants, who kept up their rocketing of southern Israel.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said residential neighborhoods in Gaza are riddled with homemade bombs and booby traps, including mannequins placed at apartment entrances to simulate militants and rigged to explode if soldiers approach. The army ‘is advancing more into urban areas,’ said the spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich.

‘Since the majority of the Hamas militants are pretty much in hiding in those places, mainly urban places, then we operate in those areas.’ Late yesterday, dense plumes of smoke from explosions rose over Gaza City and heavy gunfire was heard just south of the city.

Early today, Israeli navy gunboats fired more than 25 shells at Gaza City, setting fires and shaking office buildings, including the local bureau of The Associated Press. The military said that in general, the targets are Hamas installations, but a spokesman had no immediate information about the shelling that began just after midnight.

Gaza medical officials say at least 870 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict that began Dec. 27 with Israeli airstrikes on Hamas buildings, as well as suspected rocket launch sites and smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border. Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers, have died.

German and British envoys pressed efforts to negotiate an end to the war even though Israel and Hamas have ignored a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate and durable cease-fire…

Rights group: Israel uses white phosphorus JERUSALEM — Human Rights Watch said yesterday that Israel’s military has fired artillery shells with the incendiary agent white phosphorus into Gaza, and a doctor there said the chemical was suspected in the case of 10 burn victims who had skin peeling off their faces and bodies.

Researchers in Israel from the rights group witnessed hours of artillery bombardments that sent trails of burning smoke indicating white phosphorus over the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. But they could not confirm injuries on the ground because they have been barred from entering the territory.

The chief doctor at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza said he treated several victims there with serious burns that might have been caused by phosphorus.

White phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon, and militaries are permitted under laws of warfare to use it in artillery shells, bombs and rockets to create smoke screens to hide troop movements as well as bright bursts in the air to illuminate battlefields at night. Israel is not party to a convention regulating its use.

Under customary laws of war, however, Israel would be expected to take all feasible precautions to minimize the impact of white phosphorus on civilians, Human Rights Watch said.”

Context added by this archive

The page is headed On the Wire and slugged IN FOCUS · CONFLICT IN GAZA STRIP, and the main headline makes the density of the population the thing being targeted, with nobody targeting it. The white phosphorus dispatch that another paper ran whole and under its own headline is here a single column down the right-hand side.

Underneath, in the same copy, the Associated Press reports that its own Gaza bureau was shaken by naval shelling.

Cite this item

"Densely populated area targeted," The Journal News, 12 January 2009. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2009-028. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2009-028