15Jan

” shells

by iqu Gaza

From Times Online

January 15, 2009

Sheera Frenkel, Jerusalem, and Philippe Naughton

How The Times broke the story | Photographic evidence | Spent shells prove use | The burn victims | War in Gaza photojournalism

The main UN compound in Gaza was in flames today after being struck by Israeli artillery fire, and a spokesman said that the building had been hit by shells containing the incendiary agent white phosphorus.

The attack on the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) came as Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, arrived in Israel on a peace mission and plunged Israel’s relations with the world body to a new low.

Mr Ban told reporters in Tel Aviv that he had expressed “strong protest and outrage” to the Israeli Government over the shelling of the compound and was demanding an investigation. He said that Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, had told him that it was “a grave mistake”.

UNWRA, which looks after around four million Palestinian refugees in the region, suspended its operations in Gaza after the attack, in which it said that three of its employees had been injured.

Chris Gunness, a UNRWA spokesman, said that the building had been used to shelter hundreds of people fleeing Israel’s 20-day offensive in Gaza. He said that pallets with supplies desperately needed by Palestinians in Gaza were on fire.

“What more stark symbolism do you need?” he said. “You can’t put out white phosphorus with traditional methods such as fire extinguishers. You need sand, we don’t have sand.”

The Israeli military has denied using white phosphorus shells in the Gaza offensive, although an investigation by The Times has revealed that dozens of Palestinians in Gaza have sustained serious injuries from the substance, which burns at extremely high temperatures.

The Geneva Convention of 1980 proscribes the use of white phosphorus as a weapon of war in civilian areas, although it can be used to create a smokescreen. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said today that all weapons used in Gaza were “within the scope of international law”.

The attack on the UN compound came as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City and unleashed their heaviest shelling on its crowded neighbourhoods in three weeks of war. At least 15 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attacks, medical officials said, pushing the death toll up towards 1,100 — a level that Mr Ban described as “unbearable”.

It was not clear whether the escalation signalled a new phase in the conflict. Israel has held back from all-out urban warfare in the narrow alleyways of Gaza’s cities, where Hamas militants are more familiar with the lay of the land.

Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, terrifying civilians who said that they had “nowhere left to hide” from the relentless shelling.

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15Jan

Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon

by iqu Gaza, Palestine

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Minister Jacob Edery. (Archives)

Last update – 06:42 22/10/2006

Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon

By Meron Rappaport, Haaretz Correspondent

Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.

The announcement that the Israel Defense Forces had used phosphorus bombs in the war in Lebanon was made by Minister Jacob Edery, in charge of government-Knesset relations. He had been queried on the matter by MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz-Yahad).

“The IDF holds phosphorus munitions in different forms,” Edery said. “The IDF made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground.”

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Edery also pointed out that international law does not forbid the use of phosphorus and that “the IDF used this type of munitions according to the rules of international law.”

Edery did not specify where and against what types of targets phosphorus munitions were used. During the war several foreign media outlets reported that Lebanese civilians carried injuries characteristic of attacks with phosphorus, a substance that burns when it comes to contact with air. In one CNN report, a casualty with serious burns was seen lying in a South Lebanon hospital.

In another case, Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal hospital in Ba’albek, said that he had received three corpses “entirely shriveled with black-green skin,” a phenomenon characteristic of phosphorus injuries.

Lebanon’s President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.

Phosphorus has been used by armies since World War I. During World War II and Vietnam the U.S. and British armies made extensive use of phosphorus. During recent decades the tendency has been to ban the use of phosphorus munitions against any target, civilian or military, because of the severity of the injuries that the substance causes.

Some experts believe that phosphorus munitions should be termed Chemical Weapons (CW) because of the way the weapons burn and attack the respiratory system. As a CW, phosphorus would become a clearly illegal weapon.

The International Red Cross is of the opinion that there should be a complete ban on phosphorus being used against human beings and the third protocol of the Geneva Convention on Conventional Weapons restricts the use of “incendiary weapons,” with phosphorus considered to be one such weapon.

Israel and the United States are not signatories to the Third Protocol.

In November 2004 the U.S. Army used phosphorus munitions during an offensive in Faluja, Iraq. Burned bodies of civilians hit by the phosphorus munitions were shown by the press, and an international outcry against the practice followed.

Initially the U.S. denied that it had used phosphorus bombs against humans, but then acknowledged that during the assault targets that were neither civilian nor population concentrations were hit with such munitions. Israel also says that the use of “incendiary munitions are not in themselves illegal.”

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15Jan

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

by iqu Gaza

Gallery Children victims of Gaza: Children casualities of Gaza

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1 January: A wounded Palestinian child screams as she arrives to the al-Shifa hospital after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City

Photograph: Fadi Adwan /Getty Images

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15Jan

Group accuses Israel of firing white phosphorus into Gaza

by iqu Gaza

January 12, 2009 — Updated 0034 GMT (0834 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Researchers in Israel saw bursts of white phosphorus over Gaza, group says
White phosphorus can burn people, set structures on fire
Protocol allows use when “not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons”
Group: Use in densely populated Gaza would violate international humanitarian law
Next Article in World »

By Ben Wedeman
CNN

JERUSALEM (CNN) — The international group Human Rights Watch is accusing Israel of firing weapons containing white phosphorus into Gaza. The group demands that the alleged practice cease.

Israel is declining to say whether bursts like this over Gaza involve white phosphorus.

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The group’s researchers in Israel “observed multiple air-bursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over what appeared to be the Gaza City/Jabaliya area” on Friday and Saturday, the organization said on its Web site.

“Israel appeared to be using white phosphorus as an ‘obscurant’ [a chemical used to hide military operations], a permissible use in principle” under the laws of war, the HRW posting said.

“However, white phosphorus has a significant, incidental, incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire,” the posting said. “The potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza’s high population density, among the highest in the world.”

HRW said the use of white phosphorus in Gazawould violate “the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.”

Last week, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN: “I can tell you with certainty that white phosphorus is absolutely not being used.”

Now, however, Israeli officials have a different response to questions about the possible use of phosphorus: “Any munitions that Israel is using are in accordance with international law. Israel does not specify the types of munitions or the types of operations it is conducting.”

Still, a doctor familiar with the material said it is not possible to tell, based on pictures of burns, whether white phosphorus was responsible.

“Dead tissue pretty much looks the same,” said Dr. Peter Grossman, president of the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, California.

The chemical “can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.

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Since January 3, when Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, news reports have circulated about the possible use of white phosphorus by the IDF.

HRW’s assertion was supported by munitions experts and some Palestinian doctors, including Nafiz Abu Sha’aban, who said the burns it caused were unlike anything he has seen in 27 years of practice. Watch footage of burn patients in Gaza

Though most severely burned patients have been sent to Egypt, the ongoing fighting has made it impossible to evacuate all of them, including one man with deep burns over 47 percent of his body, the doctor said.

White phosphorus is known to burn flesh down to the bone.

It’s intended to provide illumination or to create a smokescreen in battle. Under an international protocol ratified by Israel in 1995, the use of such incendiary weapons is allowed when “not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons.”

There is no prohibition per se against white phosphorus in conflict. But the timing and location of its use are restricted.

For example, it is illegal under the protocol to use white phosphorus against any personnel, civilian or military. It can be directed only against military targets. International law says incendiary weapons cannot be used where civilians are concentrated.

A house north of Gaza City was hit Sunday by something that observers contend may have been white phosphorus.

“It’s been burning since one o’clock in the morning,” Munir Hammada told CNN 11 hours later. “If you move it with your feet, it reignites. You can’t put it out with water, only sand.”

Those characteristics match the properties of white phosphorus, which ignites on contact with air.

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15Jan

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

by iqu Gaza

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31 December: Hosam Hamdan in in Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital intensive care unit after he was wounded and his two sisters killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip. At least 25% of Palestinians killed during Israel’s massive offensive in the Gaza Strip have been civilians, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said

Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

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15Jan

‘s burn victims add to pressure on army over phosphorus

by iqu Gaza

From The Times

January 12, 2009

Muhammad Nabih Ahmed, 17, who sustained severe burns from white phosphorus in Gaza

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Pressure grew on Israel to end the use of controversial white phosphorus yesterday as The Times saw more evidence of its deployment around civilian populations in Gaza.

More than 50 people with burns were taken into Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Yunis, in what the hospital director, Youssef Abu Al-Reesh, said was a massive case of exposure to white phosphorus.

“We don’t have the medical experience to judge these cases, but we searched the internet according to the cases we have, and it indeed confirmed that it’s white phosphorus munitions. I have been working in this hospital for ten years and I have never seen anything like this.”

The 1980 Geneva treaty says that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. It produces a thick white smoke when exposed to oxygen, but can cause severe burns and melt flesh to the bone if it comes into contact with skin.

The sudden influx of burns patients at Nasser Hospital coincided with Israel’s expanded ground offensive, which included the Al-Qarara and Kuza’a suburbs of Khan Yunis.

Muhammad Tahseen, 20, said that he was sitting outside his home in Al-Qarara when a shell exploded above. He described watching his two cousins writhe in pain as he stood metres away, unable to help. “There was an explosion and white smoke. I saw my cousins screaming . . . I saw them burning and their clothes burning. I saw their skin melting.”

Doctors said that they were unable to provide further help to Muhammad Nabih Ahmed, 17, listed in critical condition with burns to the chest and back. The family hope to get Ahmed treated in an Egyptian hospital. But travel from Khan Yunis to the southern border with Egypt is treacherous, and many aid organisations have ceased travelling along the roads.

When first questioned by The Times last week an Israeli military spokesman “categorically denied” using white phosphorus in Gaza. In a statement issued yesterday the spokesman’s office said: “We don’t specify operational details, nor the type of ammunition that we use, but any ammunition that is used by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is within the scope of international law.”

Human Rights Watch said it was sure Israel had used white phosphorus. “The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life,” it said.

Further research by The Times into the type of US-made shells being fired by Israeli gunners on the border with Gaza uncovered additional evidence that the light blue munitions, known as M825A1s, are carriers of white phosphorus, impregnated in more than 100 felt wedges.

The lot number – PB-91J011-002A – visible in a photograph published by The Times last week indicates that the shells being used by the IDF were assembled in September 1991 at Pine Bluff arsenal in America, where all US white phosphorus munitions are reportedly made. The contractors are Chamberlain Manufacturing [metal parts only], General Dynamics, and Ordnance and Tactical Systems.

White phosphorus can be air-burst or ground-burst. It emits a distinct garlic smell. When air-burst, it covers a larger area than ground-burst and is useful to mask large troop movements. However, this spreads the incendiary effect over a wider area.

Munir Albarsh, the Head of Emergency Medicine at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, said that doctors were collecting tissue samples at hospitals across Gaza to send for phosphorus testing at international laboratories. He added that the ministry would demand an independent international investigation into Israel’s use of white phosphorus.

15Jan

White Phosphorous: Israel Uses Chemical Weapons

by iqu Gaza, Palestine

By Emily

White phosphorous.

The US used this very same chemical weapon in the attack on Falluja in 2004. White phosphorous. The marines called their concoction ‘shake and bake’ as they used the chemical mixed with explosives against Iraqis in Falluja. Italian documentary filmmakers Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealtareported that the US used white phosphorous against civilians in Falluja, and showed images of incinerated bodies; the US denied the allegation. (Click here for a report comparing the injuries seen in Lebanon in 2006 with those seen in Gaza or for further evidence at Information Clearing House.)

White phosphorous is a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against humans, a chemical weapon made illegal in 1980 by the Geneva Conventions. It was widely used in the Vietnam war by the US, as pictured here used in a grenade.

White phosphorous melts flesh to the bone, causing fatal burns.

It ignites on contact with oxygen. Particles on a person can be temporarily extinguished with water, but as soon as they are dry they will recombust. Longer-term exposure causes poisoning, which leads to wounds of the mouth and eventual destruction of the whole jawbone.

Exposure to white phosphorus smoke in the air can also cause liver, kidney, heart, lung or bone damage and even death.

A former US soldier who served in Iraq says breathing in smoke close to a shell caused the throat and lungs to blister until the victim suffocated, with the phosphorus continuing to burn them from the inside.

White phosphorous is the chemical shown clearly in the many images of Gaza. It is easily recognizable by any veteran, thanks to our country’s long history of war crimes. White phosphorous was used against Lebanese civilians in 2006 in Israel’s war on Lebanon. The Israeli government maintains that it is only using white phosphorous as a smoke screen, but they refuse to release what is actually in the shells they are dropping on Gaza.

When there was a white phosphorous cloud simply hovering somewhere along a highway after an accident at a British plant, it was treated as a risk to public health and families were told to stay inside with windows and doors closed. Clearly, the lungs of Palestinian babies are not as worth protecting as the lungs of British ones.

This stuff is an illegal, incendiary poison. It’s being used right in front of our eyes in the most densely populated place on earth where greater than 50% are children. We probably manufactured it, and at the very least, we paid for it. This picture shows a white phosphorous shell exploding on the ground in Gaza.

The ADC has called for an investigation into the use of white phosphorous in Gaza by the Israeli army. According to this former Major in the British army,

If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.

The body of a child killed in Lebanon in 2006, when Israel dropped white phosphorous bombs.

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Then again, we should not be allowed to remain ignorant of the damage this chemical weapon causes while it is being used in Gaza.

15Jan

Israel using white phosphorus

by iqu Gaza, Palestine

Israel ‘using white phosphorus’

White phophorus, fired in a shell, can be used to hide troop movements or illuminate targets [AFP]

Human Rights Watch has called on Israel to stop using white phosphorus which it says has been used in military operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

The US-based group said that its researchers observed the use of the chemical, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabaliya on Friday and Saturday.

“We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them,” Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera.

“Clearly it is [white phosphorus], we can tell by the explosions and the tendrils that go down [and] the fires that were burning,” he said.

“Today there were massive attacks in Jabaliya when we were there. We saw that there were numerous fires once the white phosphorus had gone in.”

‘Obscurant’

International law permits the use of white phopshorus as an “obscurant” to cover troop movements and prevent enemies from using certain guided weapons, but its use is controversial as it can injure people through painful chemical burns.

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“Even if they are using it as an obscurant, they are using it in a very densely populated area,” Garlasco said.

“The problem is it covers such a wide area that when the white phosphorus wafers come down, over 100 in each artillery shell, they burn everything they touch and they don’t stop burning until they are done.

“You are talking about skin damage, potentially homes going on fire, damage to infrastructure.”

Human Rights Watch said that it believed the use of the chemical in Gaza violated the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.

The Israeli military has previously denied using white phosphorus during the 15-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has said that any munitions that it does use comply with international law.

Israel used white phophorus during its 34-day war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement in 2006, while the United States used it during the controversial siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.

15Jan

Greece-Style Riots Coming To U.S.

by iqu Gora Chaudhary

Troops and mercenaries will be used to detain Americans in prison camps, warns deadly accurate trends forecaster

Greece-Style Riots Coming To U.S. 151208top

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 15, 2008

Frighteningly accurate trends forecaster Gerald Celente says that America will see riots similar to those currently ongoing in Greece and that the cause will be a hyper-inflationary depression, leading to the inevitable use of troops and mercenaries to deal with the crisis as Americans are incarcerated in internment camps.

As we have highlighted before, Celente’s accuracy is stunning – he predicted the 1987 crash, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the “panic of 2008,” and is routinely cited even by mainstream news networks as highly credible.

The cause of the riots would be a hyper-inflationary depression, Celente told interviewer Lew Rockwell, causing Americans to revolt in similar circumstances that we have witnessed recently in Iceland and Greece. The trouble would be sparked off by Obama declaring a “bank holiday” whereby people won’t be able to withdraw their money.

“What’s going on in Greece with these riots has nothing to do with a 15-year-old boy being killed, that was only the spark that ignited the pent up, really hatred and disdain, people have for the scandals and corrupt government and the same thing is going on in this country as well,” said Celente.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Celente reiterated his prediction of a revolution and riots in America, and said that the first signs of it could even emerge before the end of the year.

Celente said that the troops now being brought back to America for “domestic security”would be used to suppress the riots.

“There’s talk of opening all these detention centers and hiring the goon squads, the Blackwaters to run them, so these are realities going on as we speak,” said Celente, adding that the Halliburton subsidiary KBR had been awarded a half a billion dollar contract to build “national emergency” internment camps in the name of detaining illegal immigrants but that they would be used to hold rioting Americans.

“We’re really in a period of ‘off with their heads’ and its going to be the people against the politicians,” said Celente.

Celente said that a breakup of the United States was possible and that the secessionist movement was strong.

“The government owns and runs the largest mortgage company, owns the largest insurance company, they’re going to be owning a piece of the oil industry, so it’s a fight against a totalitarian government…so there’s going to be rebellions and things will change for the better if we break up these criminal governments that are in place now,” said Celente.

The forecaster added that the government was killing people for a false reason in Iraq and robbing people blind with the bailouts at home.

Listen to the interview here.

Research related articles:

15Jan

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

by iqu Palestine

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29 December: A Palestinian man carries his wounded child to the treatment room of Kamal Adwan hospital following an Israeli missile strike in Beit Lahiya

Photograph: Ashraf Amra/AP

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” shells

Sheera Frenkel, Jerusalem, and Philippe Naughton

Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

In pictures

Group accuses Israel of firing white phosphorus into Gaza

Don’t Miss

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

‘s burn victims add to pressure on army over phosphorus

White Phosphorous: Israel Uses Chemical Weapons

By Emily

Israel using white phosphorus

Greece-Style Riots Coming To U.S.

Troops and mercenaries will be used to detain Americans in prison camps, warns deadly accurate trends forecaster

The youngest casualties of the conflict in Gaza (13 pictures)

All posts by iqu

Sheera Frenkel, Jerusalem, and Philippe Naughton

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By Emily

Troops and mercenaries will be used to detain Americans in prison camps, warns deadly accurate trends forecaster