Old habits die hard
Israeli army says forces realised they were children only at last minute, too late to hold fire.
(And we are too believe this)?
TEL AVIV - The Israeli army admitted on Friday that three Palestinian children killed in the Gaza Strip this week had nothing to do with militants and were merely playing in an area near rocket launchers.
"After an internal investigation it appears they were children playing … and had no involvement in hostile activity," a spokesman said.
The soldiers who opened fire on a field in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday spotted people of an indeterminate age approaching and then backing away from the rocket launchers as if to load them.
"The forces realised they were children only at the last minute but it was too late to hold fire," the spokesman said.
The army expressed regret over the death of children but held Palestinian militants responsible for firing rockets from inhabited areas.
Immediately after the incident, the army said it had opened fire after spotting "several suspicious looking people fiddling with the rocket launchers."
Cousins Yahya Ramadan Ghazal, 12, Mahmud Mussa Ghazal, 10, and Sara Suleiman Ghazal, 9, were all killed in the incident on Wednesday.
