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Holes are shot in army's denial of Gaza attack
Doubts have been cast on the Israeli rebuttal of the Goldstone Report, after it emerged last night that a bomb was defused last year at a Gaza flour mill that Israel had officially said did not come under air attack in the war.
The presence of a large part of the fractured Mark 82 bomb was reported to a demining team in late January 2009, and technicians were dispatched to defuse the 500lb device on 11 February.
The flour mill is the only one in Gaza, and the Goldstone Report, commissioned by the United Nations, said its destruction "was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population".
The discrepancy came to light on a day in which domestic and international debate over the Goldstone Report and Israel's response was fueled by a reprimand issued to two high-ranking officers.
Israel said a brigadier-general and a colonel had "exceeded their authority in a manner that jeopardized the lives of others" by authorizing the firing of artillery shells into the area of the main UN compound in Gaza. The Israeli military denied a Haaretz report that the two had been reprimanded over the use of white phosphorus.
UN officials had described how the attack–which destroyed the UN warehouse–scattered burning white phosphorus through the compound.