'It's a little girl.' Tapes reveal troops' 'kill'

[Violet_Crumble]

By Ed O'Loughlin
Jerusalem
November 24, 2004

Israeli television has broadcast a military tape recording suggesting that Israeli troops knowingly shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Rafah last month.

The tape, broadcast on Channel Two's Uvda program on Monday night, records communications between Israeli soldiers as they killed 13-year-old schoolgirl Iman al-Hams after she allegedly strayed towards their fortified positions along Gaza's border with Egypt.

The unidentified commander of the unit has been charged with five minor offences after several of his troops accused him of deliberately emptying his assault rifle into the child after she had already been shot several times - a procedure known in the Israeli army as "confirmation of kill".

The following extracts from the tape were published in Hebrew in yesterday's edition of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

06:48 The observation point identifies the girl.

Observation point: "It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward ... a girl of about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Middle-East-Crisis/Its-a-little-girl-Tapes-reveal-troops-kill/2004/11/24/1100972401791.html

I may be a bit slow on the uptake here, but what's the difference between the deliberate killing of this child and the deliberate killing of Israeli children?

Violet...