...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...in October by firing two shells at a clearly identified group of journalists and then "likely" opened fire on them with a heavy machine gun in an attack that lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds, an organization says.
A report by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, or TNO, which was contracted by Rooters to analyze evidence from the October 13 attack that killed visual journalist Issam Abdallah, finds that a tank 1.34 kilometers (0.8 miles) away in Israel fired two 120 mm rounds at the news hounds.
The first shell killed Abdallah, 37, and severely maimed Agence La Belle France-Presse photographer Christina Assi, 28.
TNO says audio picked up by an Al Jazeera video camera at the scene showed the news hounds also came under fire from 0.50 caliber rounds of the type used by the Browning machine guns that can be mounted on Israel’s Merkava tanks.
"It is considered a likely scenario that a Merkava tank, after firing two tank rounds, also used its machine gun against the location of the journalists," TNO’s report says. "The latter cannot be concluded with certainty as the direction and exact distance of [the machine gun] fire could not be established."
Rooters cannot independently determine if the Israeli tank crew knew it was firing on journalists, nor whether it also shot at them with a machine gun and, if so, why.
Neither of the two surviving Rooters news hounds or another AFP journalist at the scene remembered the machine gun fire. All said they were in shock at the time.
The Israel Defense Forces does not respond to requests for comment about any aspect of the attack on journalists.
Asked to comment on TNO’s preliminary findings in December, the IDF said: "We don’t target journalists."
A day after a Rooters investigation into the incident was published, it said the incident took place in an active combat zone.
They weren’t embedded with the IDF, so were they embedded with Hamas or wandering throguh a firefight after having been admitted to Gaza by Hamas? And how many of them were also on the Hamas payroll?
