No indictment in killing of four Palestinian kids on Gaza beach

Israeli army prosecutor decides not to open a criminal probe into a widely reported-on air strike against four children playing on a Gaza City beach during last year’s war. The MAG says it will, however, investigate the shelling of a medical clinic ‘in honor’ a fallen soldier.

A Palestinian child, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza beach, is carried away by paramedics, Gaza City, July 16, 2014. Four children were killed during the attack. (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

The Israeli military will not seek any indictments over the killing of four Palestinian children on the beach in Gaza last summer, the Military Advocate General announced on Thursday. The four children were killed in a July 16 airstrike that targeted them while they played on a Gaza beach adjacent to where a sizable foreign press contingent was staying.

In its announcement, the MAG claimed that the children had run into — and subsequently out of — what it described as a Hamas naval compound, “closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population.” At least two foreign journalists who were in Gaza at the time disputed that claim on Friday, asserting that the site was easily accessible to the public and only meters from a stretch of sand popular with swimmers and sunbathers.

Paramedics, journalists and bystanders run toward the the scene where four Palestinian children were killed by Israeli military shelling at a Gaza City beach, July 16, 2014. (photo: Activestills)