Who Killed Huda's Family?

Huda. Remember her on your screens?

Well, this went up at 8:39:-

IDF Investigation: Hamas Bomb Killed 7 on Gaza Beach
08:39 Jun 13, '06 / 17 Sivan 5766

(IsraelNN.com) A Hamas mine and not Israeli shelling is to blame for the deaths of seven members of an Arab family killed on a Gaza beach last Friday, according to the tentative findings of an Israel Defense Forces probe into the explosion, due out today. Some of the evidence is shrapnel taken from three others wounded in the blast who received treatment in Israeli hospitals.

The Hamas placed the bomb as a booby trap for IDF forces who sometimes operate in the beach area. Based on ballistic tests, the IDF concluded that the explosive material which caused the deaths is not in use by the army and therefore could not have been an IDF standard shell. At the outset of the investigation, all IDF forces in the area had stated clearly that they had not fired in the direction of the accident.

Ha'aretz (of course) has it a bit different:-

Probe: Hamas bomb, not IDF shell, caused Gaza deaths

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Last update - 07:30 13/06/2006

An Israel Defense Forces committee investigating the deaths of seven Palestinians at a Gaza beach last Friday is close to concluding that the IDF was not responsible.

The committee, headed by Major General Meir Kalifi, is due to present its findings to the defense minister and the chief of staff Tuesday night. Its tentative conclusion is that the deaths stemmed from a bomb that Hamas planted on the beach in order to ambush Israeli naval commandos operating in northern Gaza.

IDF spokesman's initial announcement did not formally accept responsibility, it expressed deep regret for the deaths and announced an end to the artillery fire on Gaza until the incident had been investigated.

But as time passed, and more data was amassed, the IDF's assessment changed: Some pieces of data seemed to rule out the possibility that an Israeli shell was responsible, while others bolstered the theory that a Palestinian mine was to blame. The main question now is how unequivocal
Kalifi's conclusion will be.

The importance of the committee's findings are obviously mitigated by the fact that ultimately, the IDF is being cleared by an IDF investigation. This is not an international inquiry, or even an external, civilian inquiry. Nevertheless, the army hopes that the findings will clear its name. Thus the next step will be leveraging these findings to affect public opinion Israeli (where the battle is already largely won; even human rights organizations cast doubt on the Palestinian claims on Monday), international and even Palestinian.

Kalifi's committee examined a great deal of material, including film footage shot by Arab television stations at the scene. Some of the findings have already been reported: that five of the shells definitely landed some
250 meters from the beach, and that the explosion occurred at least eight minutes after the missing sixth shell was fired. However, this evidence has now been bolstered by three new findings:

* The shrapnel. Three people wounded in the blast are now hospitalized in Israel. Shrapnel was apparently removed from their bodies, and this is likely to reinforce the conclusion that the explosion was caused by a bomb
rather than a shell.

* The crater. Based on photographs, the crater left on the beach by the blast seems to have been made by an explosion from below (a mine), not a hit from above (a shell).

* Intelligence. Israel has amassed considerable information indicating that over the past few weeks, ever since Israeli commandos infiltrated Gaza and killed a rocket-launching cell, Hamas has been systematically mining the northern Gaza beach in an attempt to keep Israeli commandos from landing there again.

The main hole in the army's evidence is the missing sixth shell actually, the first to be fired whose landing site has not been determined. From an examination of the cannon, the army is convinced that the shell could not have fallen on the beach, almost half a kilometer from its intended target. But there is no firm proof of this, only an educated guess.

Jerusalem Post was the first paper to go with this:-

Jun. 13, 2006 0:30 | Updated Jun. 13, 2006 1:22
Report: Chances slim that IDF shell killed Gazans on beach
By JPOST.COM STAFF

The IDF probe investigating the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians, caused by an explosion on a beach in Gaza on Friday evening, concluded that chances were slim that the accident was caused by IDF shelling.

According to Channel 2, the findings, expected to be formally released on Tuesday, showed an inconsistency between the shrapnel found in the body of one of the wounded babies and the metal used in IDF artillery.

Moreover, the investigation noted the absence of a large enough crater at the site of the explosion, as would be expected if an IDF shell had landed there.

The third observation casting doubt on the possibility of IDF shelling was the gap between the time when the army shot the artillery and when the commotion on the beach began. According to the probe's findings, several minutes past after the shelling, before the Palestinians on the beach reacted.

I quick-checked of Reuters and UPI revealed nothing of the above.