JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip –
A Palestinian human rights group and an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday that an explosion at a cemetery that killed five Palestinian children during the latest Gaza flare-up was caused by an Israeli airstrike and not an errant Palestinian rocket.
It was one of a series of explosions during the fighting that showed no telltale signs of an Israeli F-16 or drone strike, and which the Israeli military said could have been caused by misfired rockets by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. .
The five children, aged between 4 and 16, had gathered at the local cemetery, one of the few open spaces in the crowded Jebaliya refugee camp, on August 7, hours before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire end three days of intense fighting.
Residents said a shell fell from the air and exploded in the cemetery. When The Associated Press visited the site, it didn’t see any of the usual signs of an airstrike by an Israeli F-16 or drone, raising suspicions that the blast was caused by an errant rocket. Both the Israeli military and Palestinian rights groups said at the time that they were still investigating the blast.
On Tuesday, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said its investigation of the shrapnel and other evidence led it to conclude the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike.
“This was a missile fired from an Israeli aircraft,” said Raji Sourani, director of the group, while showing images of what he said was a fragment showing the missile’s serial number.
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted unnamed Israeli defense officials as saying that the military investigation had concluded that the five were killed in an Israeli strike.
When asked about the Haaretz story, the military said it was still looking into the event. He said that during the latest round of fighting, he had targeted militant infrastructure and “made every effort to minimize, as much as possible, damage to civilians and civilian property.”
At a sit-in by family members at the blast site on Tuesday, Sahar Nijm said the loss of her son Mohammed was made all the more painful by the suggestion that he was killed by a Palestinian rocket.
“We always hear about other massacres, but when it happens to you, you really feel the oppression,” he said. “Especially when (Israel) denies this in order to present us as oppressors and terrorists to the international community.”
Diana Nijim said her son Hamid was desperate to get out after sheltering indoors for the first two days of fighting. She said that he and the other children went to the cemetery because it was the only open space in the neighborhood where they could play.
“This is the cruelest crime in the world,” he said. “This is deliberate. They want to uproot us.”
The latest fighting in Gaza began with a wave of Israeli airstrikes on August 5 that killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander and several civilians. Israel said it was responding to an imminent threat days after the arrest of a senior Islamic Jihad leader in the occupied West Bank.
Over the next three days, Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes along the narrow, populated coastline. Islamic Jihad fired some 1,100 rockets at Israel, about 200 of which missed and landed inside Gaza, according to the Israeli military.
Hamas, a larger and more militarily advanced group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, did not participate in this round of fighting. ostensibly to maintain understandings with Israel that have led to a relaxation of the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after he took power. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several minor skirmishes in the last 15 years.
A total of 49 Palestinians were killed in the latest fighting, including 17 children. Palestinian rights groups say at least 36 people were killed in the Israeli airstrikes, with investigations still ongoing into the deaths of another 13. No Israelis were killed or seriously injured.
The Israeli army said early estimates showed that at least 20 of the dead were militants, with 14 people killed by errant rocket fire from Islamic Jihad. That count did not include the five killed in the Jebaliya cemetery.
The day before the explosion at the cemetery, seven people were killed by an explosion on a busy street elsewhere in Jebaliya. The Israeli army blamed it on a failed rocket fire by Islamic Jihad and said the army had not carried out any attacks in the area at the time. The military later released a video that appeared to show a militant rocket failing.
Video footage from the aftermath of that explosion showed what appeared to be a rocket casing sticking out of the ground. When the AP visited the site, the carcass was gone and the hole had been filled. Palestinians are often willing to show evidence of Israeli air strikes to the international media.
Palestinians with direct knowledge of the suspicious incidents have been reluctant to speak out officially. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry ordered journalists not to report rocket firing failures in media guidelines that were rescinded after an outcry from foreign media outlets.
Many Palestinians view Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups as freedom fighters resisting decades of Israeli military rule, and believe that criticism of these groups undermines the fight for independence. Israel and Western countries consider them terrorist organizations because they have carried out dozens of deadly attacks against Israeli civilians.
The four Gaza wars have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were killed in Israeli attacks. More than half were civilians, according to the UN More than 100 people have been killed on the Israeli side, including civilians, soldiers and foreign residents.
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Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Ottawa, Ontario, contributed to this report.