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| Published: June 20, 2006 |
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Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has not ruled out the possibility that Israeli ordnance caused a blast on a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinian civilians, his office said Monday.
Last week, in presenting the results of a military investigation, Peretz said the explosion was not caused by an Israeli shell fired at the time of the June 9 blast, as the Palestinians have charged, but by an explosive buried in the sand.
The investigation did not conclude how the explosive got there, or who it belonged to, but Israeli officials have accused Palestinian militants of planting them there to prevent Israeli troops from ambushing rocket launchers.
At a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Peretz told ministers the blast could have been caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance that had already been on the beach, his office said.
The blast killed seven members of one family that was picnicking on the beach, including two children.
An investigation by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch group concluded that shrapnel found on the site and in the bodies of injured Palestinians was from an Israeli shell. A blast expert with the group, Mark Garlasco, did not rule out the possibility that Palestinian militants had planted the shell in the area, or that it was an unexploded shell from an earlier Israeli attack.
Unexploded ordnance left over from the current conflict as well as from wars over the past century has been a problem in Gaza, where there are several incidents a year of Palestinians wounded in blasts.
Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi, the officer who headed the Israeli investigation, said tests on shrapnel removed from the body of an injured girl taken to an Israeli hospital proved it was not from an Israeli shell. |
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