Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians

Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians

www.amnesty.org

Apart from white phosphorus, the Israeli army used a variety of other weapons in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza in the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.

Flechettes are 4cm long metal darts that are sharply pointed at the front, with four fins at the rear. Between 5,000 and 8,000 are packed into 120mm shells which are generally fired from tanks. The shells explode in the air and scatter the flechettes in a conical pattern over an area about 300m wide and 100m long.

An anti-personnel weapon designed to penetrate dense vegetation, flechettes should never be used in built-up civilian areas. The Israeli army has used them in Gaza periodically for several years. In most cases their use has resulted in civilians being killed or injured.

Amnesty International's fact-finding team in Gaza first heard about the use of flechettes in the most recent conflict some ten days ago. The father of one of the victims showed the team a flechette which had been taken out of his son's body.

In its latest post on Amnesty International's Livewire blog, the team described how on Monday it visited towns and villages around Gaza and found more hard evidence of the use of flechettes.

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Not content with using WP against civilians, the Israeli army has also been using flechettes against civilians.

They have been deplyng this weapon in gaza for a number of years according to AI and they are using them to systematically cull the civilian population.

This has to stop - Israel is engaged in a programme of slowly exterminating the people of gaza.

It's time for the international community to make a stand against these war criminals and impose REAL sanctions.

Meanwhile the US is sending more munitions so that the israeli's can continue their pogrom - but they are not alone in this, the following countries have also sold plenty of weapons to Israel; Germany, France, the UK, Spain, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Canada, Slovenia, Australia, Romania, Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Serbia-Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzogovina.



www.amnesty.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 29/1/2009 by budski]