IDF: Palestinians use kids to collect Qassam launchers - Haaretz

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Wed., August 22, 2007 Elul 8, 5767

Israel Time: 02:38 (EST+7)

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IDF: Palestinians use kids to collect Qassam launchers

By Yuval Azoulay, Yoav Stern and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies

The Israel Defense Forces killed six Palestinians in three separate incidents yesterday, including two children who were targeted as they tried to collect Qassam rocket launchers in the Gaza Strip.

The children, aged nine and 12, were killed in the afternoon by an IDF tank in the northern Gaza Strip. The two were seen moving in a field near Beit Hanun toward rocket launchers immediately after Qassam rockets had been fired on towns in Israel.

The rockets struck the area near Kibbutz Zikim, south of Ashkelon. There were no injuries or damage.

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Soon after the launch, an IDF force identified the source of the rocket fire, surveyed the area, and identified a number of suspicious images near the launchers. A tank in the area fired a round, which killed the two children. Another child was seriously injured in the incident.

"Children have no reason to be near Qassam rocket launchers," IDF officers said in a statement last night.

They said it is possible that Islamic Jihad had hired the children to collect the launchers after the launch. This phenomenon had already been observed in other instances, the IDF officers said.

The tank fired at the figures only after they were seen close to the launchers, IDF sources said.

The only reason anyone approaches the launchers after rockets are fired is to collect them or reload them, the sources said, so there was no way to avoid shooting at the people near the launchers.

"If these were children or youths, we regret the use that the terrorist groups are making of them," a statement from the IDF spokesman read yesterday.

An IDF source said that troops that had carried out the operation identified the figures next to the launchers as militants. "They were handling the launchers and they obviously hadn't come to slide on them," he said. "Every Palestinian, including the militants, knows that anyone who hangs around these launchers is endangering themselves."

According to IDF analysts, yesterday's rocket attack against Israel was carried out by the Jerusalem Battalions of the Islamic Jihad.

They said that the militants fled as soon as the rockets were launched.

"This is a cynical use of children but we are no longer surprised by anything we see. A 14-year-old child has already fired an RPG rocket against an IDF force, a grandmother aged close to 70 fired a light weapon against a Givati [Brigade] force recently in the Strip. What were these children doing there anyway? The militants fled immediately after the launch and then sent the children to collect the launchers," one of the sources added.

In another Qassam rocket attack, against the western Negev, one rocket hit a kindergarten in Sderot, causing damage. No injuries were reported because the children are still on summer vacation and the kindergarten was empty. The second Qassam landed in fields.

Palestinian militants have also fired several mortar shells at the western Negev, causing no injuries or damage.

Earlier yesterday, IDF troops killed three Palestinian militants near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip, near Khan Yunis.

According to the IDF, the militants were members of Islamic Jihad and were trying to carry out a shooting attack against Israeli targets near the fence. The army said the militants belong to a cell that had carried out such attacks in the past.

The incident began when the vehicle the three were in was spotted and attacked from the air. The three managed to flee, but they were intercepted by an IDF force in the fields.

A fourth militant was injured in the incident.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad said that the four were on a "jihad-related" activity.

"The blood of our martyrs will be avenged," a statement read.

IDF troops found three sniper rifles in searches of the area following the incident, the army said.

On Monday night, Israel's Channel 2 television reported that six Hamas men killed in an Israeli attack earlier in the day were members of a sniper unit.

The six militants were killed and another was wounded in an IDF rocket strike on a car traveling in the central Gaza Strip.

In an incident in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, IDF troops shot and killed a Palestinian gunman.

The soldiers operating in the Al-Ein refugee camp saw a Palestinian gunman who fired at them before they returned fire and hit him, the army said.

The militant was identified as 38-year-old Nasser Mabrouk, a member of an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

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