Update: U.N. 'sure' no militants at school hit by Israeli troops

Now this is what the CBC has to say about the events, since their is no UN statement as of now concerning that event.

""John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said at least 55 people were also injured at the school.

Ging's colleague, agency spokesperson Christopher Gunness, told the BBC that 15 of those injured are in critical condition.

Ging, who spoke to reporters in New York via video conference from Gaza, said UNRWA regularly provides the Israeli army with GPS co-ordinates of its facilities, including the school.

"Of course, it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.

Gunness called for an investigation into the incident.

"We are rooting our response very firmly in international humanitarian law. We are saying there must be an independent investigation and the facts must speak for themselves," he said.""

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/01/06/gaza-attacks.html?ref=rss

They are asking for an investigation, no one is saying any thing either way. Your Title is Hearsay and sensational not accurate not true though. CNN is a at times sensational and does bend the truth as well. Ethical reporting demands neutrality and objectivity as well as sticking to the facts, double checking and using two sources if possible from opposite ends. If not done so, all it is, is Propaganda. Yet now news!

the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released an 81-page report on “Hamas Exploitation of Civilians as Human Shields.” It describes such Hamas practices as:

• firing projectiles “at Israeli population centers from inside or close to private Palestinian residences and sometimes from educational institutions and mosques”;
  
• “exploit[ing] IDF warnings to civilians to evacuate their residences…to send children and adolescents to the relevant locations”; and
  
• “repeatedly attack[ing]” the crossings into Gaza “with rocket and mortar shell fire as well as attempted mass-casualty and suicide bombing attacks.”

Detailed reports, though, have little power compared to the graphic images projected to the world by the media-terrorism complex. Although the Associated Press reported that “Area residents confirmed the [IDF] account [of the school incident], saying militants were seen staging attacks from the area,” it also described the growing agitation against Israel including a top UN official “call[ing] for an investigation into the mounting civilian death toll.”

Perhaps hasbara, perhaps not, but from the link in gahooch's story on NP

Witness in UN Gaza School Comfirms Hamas Firing From Within

the New York Times claims to have a witness statement from a sixteen-year old Hamas supporter:

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.

Contributing journalists listed as Taghreed El-Khodary reported from Gaza City, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger in Jerusalem; Michael Slackman from Cairo; Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations; Alan Cowell and Katrin Bennhold from Paris; and Graham Bowley from New York.

Two residents of the area near UN school that was shelled by the IDF on Tuesday said that they had seen a small group of terrorists firing mortar rounds from a street close to the school. The two spoke with The Associated Press by telephone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

The army said the school grounds were being used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at troops stationed nearby, and the soldiers responded by firing back. According to the IDF, the dead included members of the Hamas rocket cell, including senior operatives Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar.

Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinians there.

The army noted that Tuesday was not the first time Hamas had attacked Israel from within a school. The IDF released a video taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle in late 2007 showing terrorists firing mortars from right outside a school.

"Hamas has in the past fired at Israel and at troops from inside schools, [exploiting] civilians, as is proven by UAV footage," the army said.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 5 (Reuters) - By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's "engineering unit" -- its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.

The Israeli army accused Hamas of using civilians as "human shields" and said its troops had fired mortars at the premises after gunmen mortared their positions from inside al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.

Citing intelligence reports, it named two men it said were Islamist gunmen killed in the attack. A spokesman said the army did not know how many others died.

Israel's army attacking Palestinian civilians, including children, whether the children are being used as shields or not, guarantees continued bloody resistance from those disenfranchised and attacked throughout the region.

It does not appear that Israel is taking all steps to avoid civilian casualties as has been reported by many news agencies.

It could be argued that, by Israel's actions, any civilian Palestinian deaths, whether affiliated with Hamas or not, are believed acceptable 'collateral damage' by Israel, as Israel continues its attacks.

Israel's news blackout should be ended to allow complete coverage of this ongoing tragedy.

I'm with Karen. That is the thing with the "human shield" tactic. You can't shoot when there are civilians there. Not that this applies in this case, but it just shows that the logic is moot.

~ Israel is NOT ATTACKING CIVILIANS, the oppressors of the Palestinians are firing from the midst of these "innocent civilians". So what is Israel to do? Remain restrained by the terrorists and allow her own women and children to be murdered by these dogs?

Hamas operatives above ground in Gaza were able once again to fire a few dozen rockets at Israel, one of which injured a three-month-old girl in Gedera 45 kilometers from the Strip. Israeli forces had, though, reportedly taken over most of the rocket-launching sites in northern Gaza.

A stream of EU visitors in Jerusalem were firmly rebuffed by Israeli leaders who in the past had not excelled at resisting Western pressures, and whose once-hawkish worldviews had become much softer over the years. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the French, Czech Republic, and Swedish foreign ministers that “This is the time for action not words. We are fed up with empty gestures,” and that the IDF campaign in Gaza, not a premature ceasefire, would stop the rockets.

President Shimon Peres, who in the 1990s became the key figure in setting Israel on a path of appeasing terror, spoke even more strongly to the Czech Republic and Swedish FMs along with EU foreign policy chief Benita Ferraro-Waldner, telling them that “Europe needs to open its eyes with respect to the fighting in Gaza”—and that they “must understand that Hamas is a terror organization of the worst order that uses its population of women and children as human shields.”

And Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni—now also an aspirant for the office of prime minister and rival of hawkish Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu—went so far as to tell the Europeans that “When Israel is targeted, Israel is going to retaliate. Israel is going to give an answer to [rocket fire] because this is an ongoing, long war against terror.”

he Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center happened to release an 81-page report on “Hamas Exploitation of Civilians as Human Shields.” It describes such Hamas practices as:

• firing projectiles “at Israeli population centers from inside or close to private Palestinian residences and sometimes from educational institutions and mosques”;
  
• “exploit[ing] IDF warnings to civilians to evacuate their residences…to send children and adolescents to the relevant locations”; and
  
• “repeatedly attack[ing]” the crossings into Gaza “with rocket and mortar shell fire as well as attempted mass-casualty and suicide bombing attacks.”

Detailed reports, though, have little power compared to the graphic images projected to the world by the media-terrorism complex. Although the Associated Press reported that “Area residents confirmed the [IDF] account [of the school incident], saying militants were seen staging attacks from the area,” it also described the growing agitation against Israel including a top UN official “call[ing] for an investigation into the mounting civilian death toll.”