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UN report: BBC journalist’s son killed by Hamas rocket
A UN report has said that the infant son of a BBC video editor Jehad Mashhrawi, and two relatives who were killed during Operation Pillar of Defence last November, were apparently hit by shrapnel from a misfired Palestinian rocket, and not an Israeli airstrike as was widely reported at the time.
An advance version of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report into the conflict, published last week, said that 11-month-old Omar Mashhrawi and his family members, “were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” The incident happened in the family’s home in the Zaytoun neighbourhood of Gaza City. Jehad Mashhrawi dismissed the UN findings as “rubbish”, telling the BBC that Palestinian armed groups would usually apologise if they had been responsible.
Images of the grieving father holding his dead son in the wake of the tragic incident were broadcast around the world, fuelling accusations that Israel failed to discriminate between combatants and civilians in its military operation. The UN report is scathing in its criticism of Palestinian armed groups, both for “launching indiscriminate attacks” against Israeli civilians and for “launching rockets from populated areas, which put the population at grave risk.” It is more cautious in its criticisms of Israel stating that, “Based on the information available to OHCHR, the IDF did not consistently uphold the basic principles of conduct of hostilities, namely, the principles [of] distinction, proportionality and precautions.” It added that, “the effectiveness, sufficiency and adequacy of precautions taken remains questionable in several cases.”
Israel went to considerable lengths during the conflict to show that it was targeting members of armed groups, and making every effort to avoid harm to the civilian population, despite Palestinian armed groups basing themselves within civilian areas. The IDF launched the weeklong operation in mid-November to stop escalating rocket fire from the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip at population centres inside Israel.