Israelis Blame Hamas for Beach Deaths

An Israeli military investigation has blamed the killing of seven members of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach, including five children, on a land mine planted by Hamas, not shelling by the army.

But Palestinian leaders described the army's conclusions as a cover-up and a former Pentagon analyst, sent by a US human rights group to investigate the deaths, said the military has ignored evidence that leaves little doubt the family was killed by a stray Israeli shell that Israel admits is unaccounted for.

The Palestinians accused the army of rushing to clear itself to save the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, embarrassment as he tours Britain and other European countries to win support for his plan to draw the Jewish state's final borders by annexing part of the West Bank.

Television pictures of 10-year-old Huda Ghalia wailing on the beach over the bodies of her dead father and five siblings on Friday had threatened to derail Mr Olmert's public relations drive and severely embarrassed the army at home. Mr Olmert initially said he regretted the killings but in London on Monday sought to distance Israel from responsibility.

The military now says that it fired six shells on to and around the beach where Huda Ghalia's family died, with one of them falling about 100 yards away, but by coincidence a mine planted by Hamas exploded in the same area at the same time. The military backs its claim with analysis of aerial photographs, shrapnel and what it is says is intelligence that Hamas has mined Gaza beaches to stop Israeli forces landing, although it is not known to have used such a tactic before.

But a former Pentagon offical sent by the New York-based Human Rights Watch to investigate the death of the family has concluded that there is little doubt they were killed by an Israeli shell. "All the evidence points to the fact that it couldn't have been a mine," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon expert on battlefields who led the US military's battle damage assessment team in Kosovo and worked for its intelligence wing, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky not explosives under the sand."

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the army concedes that five shells landed along a 250-metre stretch of beach and that a sixth shell is unaccounted for. But it says that an eight-minute gap between when the sixth shell was fired and when the Palestinians say the family was blown up means there is no connection between the two.

The army says that aerial pictures of the blast crater show it is more likely to have been made by a mine under the sand than a explosion from above.

Ha'aretz said the military report also claims that a decision by Palestinian doctors to remove shrapnel from the bodies of some of the wounded before they went to Israel for treatment is an attempt to cover up the source of the wounds.

But after investigating the scene, Mr Garlasco concluded that the army's explanation is deeply flawed. Among the new shrapnel he collected at the scene of the deaths is a piece stamped with the figures: 155MM.

"The 155mm shell is what Israel uses in the howitzers that regularly shell northern Gaza," he said.

"The Israelis have been postulating that it's a land mine. I've been to hospital and seen the injuries. The doctors say they are primarily to the head and torso. That is consistent with a shell exploding above the ground not a mine under it." Palestinian doctors agreed.

Mr Garlasco said the crater where the family was killed closely resembles others scattered the length of the beach caused by Israeli shells. Each is lined with a white power left by the explosion, including the one where the family died.

A crucial weakness in the army's version is its inability to account for the sixth shell in the barrage that hit the beach. The Palestinians and Mr Garlasco say it would be a remarkable coincidence for the army to drop five shells in the area and within minutes for a Hamas land mine to have exploded just 120 metres away.

"To say you have five or six rounds in an area and coincidentally there's a land mine next to it and it goes off at the same time is asking a lot," he said.

The Israeli army said it is not prepared to discuss the findings of its report until they are formally submitted to the government. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused the Israelis of a cover-up.

"The Israelis should have admitted what they did and apologised. They know who did it and we know who did it. They want to escape responsibility because it was a severe embarrassment to the military at home and the prime minister when he is abroad. The pictures followed him to Europe," he said.