Israeli shells hit UN posts in Lebanon, no one hurt

[TomInTib]

Looks as if Israel has as much respect for the UN as does the US.

BEIRUT, July 19 (Reuters) - Two Israeli artillery shells on Wednesday landed inside a compound run by U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon who were sheltering 36 civilians, but no one was hurt, a spokesman for the UNIFIL force said.

The shells caused material damage to the position in Maroun al-Ras, an area that had seen heavy fighting between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas during the day.

Another Israeli artillery shell landed in the UNIFIL headquarters compound in the southern town of Naqoura, he said. No one was wounded.

In 1996, during Israel's Grapes of Wrath campaign in Lebanon, an Israeli jet struck a UNIFIL compound in the southern village of Qana, killing 106 civilians sheltering inside.

more:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19641591.htm

[ShortnFiery]

1. I saw a French Contingent of the UN on CNN International today ...

What? Does the Israeli government think that The French can surrender for Hezbollah and/or Lebanon? Provides a new meaning to the warmongering term "precision guided." :shrug:

[Supersedeas]

2. more US manufactured precision strikes

[endarkenment]

3. Not possible, the UN forces blew their own site up. nt.

[uppityperson]

4. aw, come on, you know those missles are hard to aim

:evilgrin:

[TomInTib]

8. Sheer coincidence

I mean, come on, there is a distinct mathematical probability that those errant missiles hitting two UN facilities in the same day.

Kinda like those three Texas Repubs winning their Districts by a margin of 18,181 in each district.

I do not understand the need for alarm.

But if one lands in Tiburon I am gonna be really pissed off.

[uppityperson]

9. you got it.

glad to see you understand because I wouldn't want to have to be forced to call you anti-semitic or terrorist lover or anything. (I am really tired of this killing each other, and the name calling on DU. sigh)

[TomInTib]

10. Can you believe it?

This subject causes so much venomous vitriol here.

Our inability to calmly discuss this makes just about as much sense as what is actually happening in the ME. Regular sane, adult exchanges evolve into flameouts. I try to stay out of it.

But this article is serious business.

[uppityperson]

17. thank you for the article

amazing how many posts I have written this last week, then deleted without posting. Thanks for the article.

[me b zola]

25. I am too

It's just ugly and it really needs to stop--both the killing and the unbearable name calling. :grouphug:

[KansDem]

13. 3 Republicans in Texas...5 nationwide

Computerized voting machines in the 2002 election did all kinds of weird things: if you pressed the Democrat's name in some counties in Texas, for example, the Republican's name was chosen. And in Cormal County, Texas, three Republican candidates won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece. There's the kind of coincidence the FBI loves. But it gets even more amazing: in two other races elsewhere in this great nation, Republicans won by--wait for it--18,181 votes. The odds of this are similar to the odds of waking up on the surface of Mars with your underwear on your head and a bowling trophy gripped between your knees. These results were eventually 'adjusted', proving it was all just a wacky coincidence. But how can we know? Because there is no physical evidence of how a vote was cast. No punch card, no paper ballot, no twig with notches in it. And they stopped doing exit polling in 2002 (apparently the results weren't coming out right-- I see what they mean) so we can't even get an objective comparison of the digital results with the voter's intentions by asking them how they voted as they leave the polling place, bilious and sickened. Kind of makes you feel all scared and crampy, doesn't it? But yes, gentle reader, it does get worse.

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp02202003.html

Man, what are the chances?!?!? :crazy:

[TomInTib]

14. I had forgotten about the other two.

"The odds of this are similar to the odds of waking up on the surface of Mars with your underwear on your head and a bowling trophy gripped between your knees."

I like that.

[wakeme2008]

5. more Bush and Israel War Crimes

:grr:

[Roland99]

6. Knock out the minders and no one's watching.

[me b zola]

26. Next it will be the journalists

We've seen this pattern before.

[daleo]

7. Israel has shelled U.N. camps in Lebanon before

Thankfully, this time nobody was killed, as opposed to the 100+ killed in 1997.

"Qana

The town of Qana was one of the sixteen towns and villages in south Lebanon ordered evacuated on April 15 on two hours' notice.110 Three days later, on the afternoon of April 18, Israeli artillery guns positioned on the Lebanese-Israeli border fired a deadly mix of shells into the sprawling U.N. base there, killing over 100 children, women and men who had sheltered there. Some of the survivors sustained horrible injuries, and arrived at local hospitals with missing limbs, their bodies burned and riddled with shrapnel. The staggering casualty toll was due in part to the type of shells that were used in the barrage -- about two-thirds of the total were air-burst shells with proximity fuzes, the same munitions fired a day earlier at Majdal Zoun. These high-explosive devices are anti-personnel weapons, designed to explode above the ground and spread shrapnel across a wide area, in order to maximize casualties on the ground.111 Maj. Gen. Franklin van Kappen, the Dutch military adviser to then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, wrote in his official report about the Qana attack that "there was substantial evidence of multiple proximity-fused artillery ammunition detonating directly above the compound, covering a large portion of its area. While the exact number cannot be determined, the available evidence suggests that eight such projectiles detonated over the compound and one just outside it."112 "

http://hrw.org/reports/1997/isrleb/Isrleb-01.htm

[anotherdrew]

20. OMG n/t

[bemildred]

11. More "pinpoint strikes". nt

[anotherdrew]

12. and which Israeli schoolgirls got to sign those shells?

I wonder what they wrote?

[funnymanpants]

15. More info, please!

I saw that disgusting picture myself. I posted it on our local peace list. Someone pointed out (a Lebonese, no less!) that the girl might have written a peace message on it. I though if she did, it was one of the most cynical messages ever.

However, do you have more info on this picture? What *was* she writing?

[anotherdrew]

18. and more info you shall have...

here also: http://bubbleshare.com/album/48388/1382427/overview
more info here
and here
pictures by Sebastian Scheiner for AP:
Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.



Those who refused
To talk with
The Palestinian government
And declared a blockade
On the Palestinian people -
Got a conflagration in
The Gaza Strip.

Those who refused
A prisoner exchange
And sent tanks
Into Gaza -
Got a conflagration
Both In the north
And in he south.

Those who refuse
To talk even now -
May get a conflagration
Throughout the Middle East.

And in the end,
In spite of everything -
They will talk.

Ad published in Haaretz, July 14, 2006.

[ShortnFiery]

19. "from Israel and Daniele ... Jazrala with love"

:wtf: If this ACT is "with love* I shudder to think what they do to "the people" they choose to HATE. :scared: :(

[NYC]

23. Thanks for those photographs.

I hadn't seen them.

What will she grow up to be?

[anotherdrew]

24. in #2 she's poking at the arming mechanism on a fuse with a pen

this whole event was very unsafe it seems to me

it's just so sad/mad I'm speechless

[rocktivity]

16. Sorry, but I misplaced my scorecard

Israel doesn't LIKE the UN? And wasn't Bush trying to take credit for helping establish democracy in Lebanon a few years ago?

:shrug:
rocknation

[dionysus]

21. SHHH! you anti-semite!!!

don't disturb the "defense". They have saintly 10-yr old girls' "peace messages" written on those shells!

[Vidar]

22. Bolton & Bush will be pleased.