Friday, November 03, 2006

This is off the Associated Press wire today:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces opened fire Friday on a group of women who streamed to a Gaza mosque to serve as human shields for gunmen holed up there, killing one and wounding 10, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also killed in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which troops seized Wednesday in a bid to halt Palestinian rocket fire on southern Israeli communities. More than 20 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed in the offensive.

Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers quickly surrounded the mosque after gunmen fleeing troops sought refuge there, the military and Palestinian security officials said. Most of the gunmen — estimates ranged from one dozen to several dozen — were thought to be from the military wing of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party.

That is, Hamas was hiding behind women and shooting at the Israelis. What cowardice. How pathetic. Follow the above link for the rest of the story.

Now here's TV3's story, their top international report on this afternoon's news:

The Israeli army's land and air offensive against the Gaza strip, which has already caused 34 deaths according to Hebrew sources and 25 according to Palestinian, continues. The most recent victims in an exchange of fire between soldiers and armed Palestinian activists at a mosque in Beit Hanoun. They are two women who acted as human shields so that the hundred women occupying the mosque could escape. Israeli army sources state that their soldiers shot at armed "militars" (literally "soldiers", but I think they mean "militants") who were participating in the women's protest at the mosque in the northern Gaza strip.

Wow. That's a completely different story. There was a demonstration at the mosque, not a bunch of terrorists using it as a fortress. Two righteous women were killed by the Israeli army while valiantly protecting fellow protesters.

It seems that there were a hundred women occupants. The majority, however, managed to escape when the victims left the mosque and attracted the attention of the Hebrew army. In all, it is thought there are still between fifteen and twenty Palestinian women in the two buildings that make up the holy place.

I've never heard TV3 call a church a "holy place."

The army, which has the mosque surrounded and has called on the Palestinians to surrender, stated that the Palestinians shot at them from inside the mosque. Some sources have also stated that military bulldozers have knocked down a wall of the masque, causing the roof to cave in above one of the rooms, which fell on the militants and may have killed some.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army's air offensive against the Gaza Strip continues. Hebrew airplanes fired two missiles that caused the death of four Palestinians. The first missile left three wounded and one dead. Half an hour later, a second missile killed three Palestinians in the same area. In three days of operation in Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army has killed 34 Palestinians, according to the electronic edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. That figure contrasts with the number of victims given by Palestinian medical sources, who say that 25 Palestinians have died.

Jeez. With the media spouting such biased information, never mentioning why the Israelis have invaded Gaza in the first place--because Hamas is firing rockets at Israeli civilians--the fervid anti-Israel feeling in Spain, and especially Catalonia, is no surprise.

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