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Israel defies world outcry, expands Gaza raid
Also, top Palestinian leader convicted of overseeing attacks
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Defying international fury and a rare U.S. rebuke, Israel expanded its bloodiest Gaza Strip raid in years on Thursday after killing 39 Palestinians in three days of fighting in the Rafah refugee camp.
Tensions in the region rose further after a Tel Aviv court convicted Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti, of masterminding deadly attacks on Israelis.
Barghouti is second only in popularity to Yasser Arafat among Palestinians and is seen as a potential successor.
The U.N. Security Council urged an end to violence after Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, many of them youths, at a peaceful protest on Wednesday.
The Council convened at the behest of Arabs incensed at what they branded a "war crime."
Reflecting its displeasure, the United States, Israel's chief ally, allowed adoption of the U.N. resolution by abstaining rather than using its veto. President Bush urged restraint from the Jewish state.
Senior U.S. officials kept up pressure with phone calls to Israeli counterparts, urging Israel to wrap up the three-day-old raid as quickly as possible, an Israeli political source said.
Israeli commentators predicted Israel would soon comply. "Time is running out," read a headline in the Jerusalem Post.
Army forges ahead
But the army, which stormed the Rafah camp after losing 13 soldiers in Gaza ambushes last week, forged ahead on Thursday.
Troops pushed into the Rafah districts of Brazil and As-Salam, on the border with Egypt, where the army says it is hunting for tunnels used to smuggle weapons for a Palestinian revolt since 2000. Witnesses said troops demolished several homes.
An overnight helicopter strike near an olive grove killed three militants, witnesses said. Medics said the mangled remains of two other men were found in what looked like another missile attack. The army said it struck gunmen planting bombs.
Witnesses said soldiers shot dead a 39-year-old man who went onto his roof and shouted a request for water. The army said troops "spotted a terrorist and shot him."
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• 33 killed in two days
May 19: The Israeli military said it opened fire on Palestinian protesters as a warning. NBC’s Martin Fletcher reports.
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International outrage reached a crescendo on Wednesday when Israeli tanks and helicopters fired toward protesters marching to demand humanitarian aid. Medics said 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 50 hurt, many of them youths.
'Horrifying'
"It was horrifying," said demonstrator Mahmoud Abu Hashem, 35. "There was one person with his intestines coming out."
Troops said they did not aim to hit the rally, but tank fire intended to repel protesters might have caused casualties.
Violence has spiked since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed evacuating troops and Jewish settlers in a plan backed by most Israelis and the United States, but rejected by his right-wing Likud party in a referendum this month.
Palestinian militants want to claim as a victory any Israeli pullout from territories it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, but the army is determined to smash them first.
Amid the spiral of bloodshed, a Tel Aviv court found Barghouti guilty of murder over the killing of five Israelis. But it cleared him of masterminding attacks that led to the deaths of more than 20 other Israelis.
The conviction was likely to result in a life sentence for the 44-year-old West Bank legislator who was arrested in 2002.
Barghouti denied orchestrating suicide bombings and shooting ambushes and accused Israel of putting on a political show trial against what he called legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.
In rare U.S. criticism, Bush urged Israeli restraint in the Gaza raid, saying: "It is essential people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace."
A U.N. human rights envoy accused Israel of war crimes while the EU condemned the attack as "completely disproportionate." Arafat demanded punishment for those responsible.
Israel had provoked an uproar abroad with threats to flatten hundreds of Rafah homes to widen an army-controlled security corridor along the border with Egypt.
U.S. denies attack on Iraq wedding party
Elsewhere another GI killed; withdrawing Spanish troops ambushed
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials said a U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday morning in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, including children. U.S. officials confirmed an airstrike near the Syrian border, but they told NBC News that the incident involved an AC-130 warship - not a helicopter - and that the aircraft returned fire after coming under attack from militants.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the divergent accounts or even to verify that both descriptions were of the same incident.
Elsewhere in Iraq, assailants with hand grenades killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three in Baghdad on Thursday, while Spanish troops in the process of withdrawing from the country came under attack from insurgents.
The name of the slain soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.
A total of 790 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year. Of those, 576 died as a result of hostile action and 214 died of non-hostile causes.
In the attack on Spanish troops, one insurgent was killed and another seriously wounded and one Spanish soldier was slightly wounded, the spokesman said.
“This morning a Spanish convoy in the process of withdrawing and on its way to Kuwait suffered an ambush by Iraqi insurgents 30 miles south of Diwaniyah. The insurgents were repelled,” the spokesman said.
The Spanish soldiers were among the last remaining in Iraq from a force of up to 1,400 sent by the previous pro-American government. They had been stationed in a largely Shiite Muslim area of south-central Iraq, including the cities of Najaf and Diwaniyah.
Spain’s month-old Socialist government -- elected three days after March 11 train bombings killed 191 people in Madrid -- is withdrawing the troops, fulfilling a campaign promise made before the railway attacks.
Defense Minister Jose Bono has said the withdrawal will be completed by May 26, but officials say it could be over before then.
Reported attack on wedding party
Arab television identified the scene of Wednesday's attack as the village of Makr al-Deeb. The U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad issued a statement indicating that an attack occurred in the same general area, about 50 miles southwest of Husaybah and 15 miles from the Syrian border.
The area is a desolate region populated only by shepherds. It is also popular with smugglers, and the U.S. military suspects that militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. Consequently, it is under constant surveillance by U.S. forces.
• Bush: Government taking shape
May 19: President Bush tried to put a positive spin on conditions in Iraq. NBC’s David Gregory reports.
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Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said 42 to 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. (5:45 p.m. ET Tuesday) near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.
Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Iraqis interviewed on the tape said partygoers were firing in the air in traditional wedding celebration and said U.S. troops had previously mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.
But the coalition described the attack as part of “a military operation against a suspected foreign fighter safe house in the open desert.”
“During the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided,” it said. Afterward, “coalition forces on the ground recovered numerous weapons, 2 million Iraqi and Syrian dinar, foreign passports and a SATCOM radio.”
‘Nothing was happening’
Most of the bodies on the APTN videotape were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless.
“We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12,” Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told the Dubai-based satellite television station Al-Arabiya, which reported that 41 people were killed and 10 injured in the attack. “We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition.”
Al-Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
“The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us,” said an unidentified man who said he was from the village told Al-Arabiya. “They hit two homes where the wedding was being held, and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us. Nothing was happening.”
‘The pictures ... don’t mesh with what we saw’
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, told NBC News that coalition forces in the vicinity saw no signs of a wedding when they called in the air attack.
“I know the pictures are compelling, but they don’t mesh with what we saw on the ground,” he said.
U.S. officials acknowledged that the information was preliminary, however, and they said an investigation was continuing.
Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45. Al-Ani said that people at the wedding were firing weapons in the air and that U.S. troops came to investigate and then left. However, he said, helicopters returned and attacked the area about 3 a.m., destroying two houses.
The report is reminiscent of an incident in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 others were wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because U.S. planes had come under fire.
NBC’s Scott Foster, Jim Miklaszewski and Norah O’Donnell, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Soldier gets maximum in prison abuse court-martial
Deal gets him one year and bad-conduct discharge
Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits on Wednesday received the maximum penalty - one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge - in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"I'd like to apologize to the Iraqi people and those detainees," Spc. Sivits said, breaking down in tears as he made his statement. "I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos.
"I have learned huge lessons, sir. You can't let people abuse people like they have done."
His lawyer, First Lt. Stanley Martin, had appealed to judge, Col. James Pohl, to be lenient, saying Spc. Sivits could be rehabilitated and had made a contribution to society in the past.
Military legal experts say Spivits and his lawyer brokered a good plea bargain and left the door open for a possible reprieve later.
"He got a fairly good deal," said Douglas C. McNabb, the senior principal of Houston-based McNabb Associates, which specializes in military law. "The others were placed in general court martial."
Sivits went through a special discharge. It's a major distinction, McNabb points out: The other six defendants in the Abu Ghraib prison case could receive life in prison.
McNabb and other experts say the prosecution had to offer the deal if it wants to get higher-ranking officers. Many members of Congress have demanded just that.
"They worked out deal with Sivits," McNabb added. "He rolled on the other six. If they roll, they would have seven against. It's kind of like what they do in cases involving the mob or like they do in drug cases."
But prosecuting high-ranking military brass could be much tougher, military law experts say.
"They are especially loyal," said Beth Tillman, an assistant professor at New Jersey's Rutgers University School of Law, Camden. She compared that loyalty to the alleged blood oaths that mafioso take.
"Sivits is the first flipper," she said. "But he's the only one so far."
And even if the prosecution does get its lucky seven to turn on higher-ups, proving that those higher officers were criminally guilty could be nearly impossible, the experts say.
"They're going to have to show complicity," McNabb said. "They're going to have to show that the officers either directed it or knew it and failed to take action. That's a failure of command.
"The burden will be proving that there was a failure to command to correct. I don't know if it'll be documentary evidence. It may have to be testimonial evidence."
Tillman says that such failure-to-command cases in military courts are rare.
"To prove beyond reasonable doubt, it's going to be hard," she said "Failure to command is almost never charged."
McNabb and Tillman acknowledge that the political pressure to go after the bigger brass could push the prosecutions in that direction.
"It becomes a question of who knew what when," McNabb said.
The White House has fended off calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is the highest ranking of the military chain.
U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., last week called the desire to bring down Rumsfeld nothing more than political drum-beating.
In situation like this, he said, "The captain is relieved, not the admiral."
The quick sentencing of Sivits to the maximum could send the right kind of message to Americans and Iraqis who want swift justice, McNabb said. "The military and politicos want to get the word out quickly that the servicemen will not get a slap on the wrist. They're going to get the maximum."
Tillman points out that Sivits could still get his sentence reduced at a later time.
That most certainly would not sit well with many Iraqis, who were calling, literally, for the soldier's head before the court martial began.
On the eve of the first court-martial in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, relatives of those still held at Abu Ghraib prison said Tuesday the only suitable punishment would be death - illustrating the potential gap in expectations in the case.
"If they actually committed such offenses, they should be executed," said Odai Ibrahim, 55, as he waited in a line with hundreds of other Iraqis to visit relatives at the prison notorious as the site of executions and torture during Saddam Hussein's regime.
Instead, Sivits took a plea bargain.
The court-martial then found him guilty of all charges. In military law, if the defendant pleads guilty, he must prove to the court he is guilty before the court formally renders a finding.
Sivits, at times struggling to hold back tears, was charged with mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect them from abuse, cruelty and forcing a prisoner "to be positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers."
Sivits took pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being sexually humiliated at Abu Ghraib. He could face up to one year in jail, reduction in rank, loss of pay and a bad conduct discharge.
Capt. Scott Dunn, Sivits' lawyer, entered the plea on his behalf and expressed concern about the huge media coverage of the trial, asking "can you make a fair decision?"
The judge, Col. James Pohl, replied: "Just because it's on TV, it doesn't mean it's true."
In an emotional description of the events that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison on the evening of Nov. 8, Sivits said he was asked by Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick of Buckingham, Va., to accompany him to the prison facility. Sivits struggled to describe the events, pausing while telling the judge what happened.
He said he was on detail outside Abu Ghraib and had done some maintenance work on generators when Frederick asked him to accompany him to the prison. Sivits took a detainee with him and when he arrived at the scene where the crimes took place, there were seven other detainees there.
"I heard Cpl. Graner yelling in Arabic at the detainees," he said. "I saw one of the detainees lying on the floor. They were laying there on the floor, sandbags over their heads."
Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland, and another soldier, Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, were "stamping on their toes and hands."
"Graner punched the detainee in the head or temple area," Sivits said. "I said. 'DI think you might have knocked him out.'"
Sivits also said: "Graner complained that he had injured his hand and said, "Damn, that hurt."'
Sivits said all prisoners were then stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.
Sivits quoted one of the other six accused soldiers, whom he did not identify, as saying guards were "told to keep doing what they were doing by military intelligence." He added, however, that he did not believe the soldier.
Dunn, the defense lawyer, told the judge that Sivits had reached a pre-trial agreement with the prosecution, presumably to testify against others accused in the case.
In Sivits' tiny home town of Hyndman, Pa., more than 200 residents wore yellow ribbons and clutched small American flags during a candlelight vigil to support him.
His father, Daniel Sivits, made a brief statement.
"I want to make explicitly clear, Jeremy, no matter what, is still my son. We still love him," Daniel Sivits said. "I am veteran of the Vietnam war and I want to say one thing - Jeremy is always a vet in my heart and in my mind."
Earlier, three other accused - Davis, Frederick and Spc. Charles Graner Jr., of Uniontown, Pa. - appeared for arraignment in the courtroom at the Baghdad Convention Center, located in the heavily guarded Green Zone.
All three waived their right to have the charges read in court and deferred their pleas pending another hearing June 21.
The U.S. military allowed news coverage of the proceedings in the hope it will demonstrate American resolve to determine who was responsible for the abuse and punish the guilty.
Nine Arab newspapers and the prominent Arab television networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya are among 34 news organizations being allowed to have reporters in the courtroom. No audio or TV recordings will be allowed in the courtroom, however.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said that U.S. occupation authorities have refused to allow Iraqi and international human rights groups to attend the court martial.
"Barring human rights monitors from the court martial is a bad decision in its own right," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa division, said in a statement. "It also sends a terrible signal to Iraqis and others deeply concerned about what transpired in Abu Ghraib."
The case has been closely followed by many of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq - with varied opinions.
"If these people are guilty, it should come out," Marine Gunnery Sgt. Tracey Reddish, 34, of Jessup, Ga., said. "Court-martials are very fair."
Another Marine, Lance Cpl. Kyle Morgan, 20, of Beaumont, Texas, said the case was pushed by "the people in Washington sitting in their cushy chairs, judging our men here who are trying to save lives ... But the politicians are just worried about their own necks."
The scandal broke last month with the publication of pictures of prisoners suffering sexual humiliation and other brutality at the hands of American MPs serving as guards at Abu Ghraib.
The pictures generated international outrage and called into question the Bush administration's moral standing in its campaign to bring democracy to Iraq.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which inspects prisons in Iraq and elsewhere, issued a report on conditions at Abu Ghraib that said some acts against detainees were "tantamount to torture."
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A timeline of the military's investigations into conditions at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere:
- Aug. 31-Sept. 9, 2003: Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who runs the military prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, conducts an inquiry on interrogation and detention procedures in Iraq. He suggests that prison guards can help set conditions for the interrogation of prisoners.
- October-December 2003: Many of the alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib take place during this time period.
- Oct. 13-Nov. 6, 2003. Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, provost marshal of the Army, investigates conditions of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. He finds problems throughout the prisons. Some units, including the 800th Military Police Brigade, did not receive adequate training to guard prisons, he notes.
- Jan. 13, 2004: Army Spc. Joseph M. Darby, an MP with the 800th at Abu Ghraib, first reports cases of abuse at the prison.
- Jan. 16: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez orders a criminal investigation into reports of abuse at the prison by members of the brigade. The military also announces the investigation publicly.
- Jan. 18: A guard leader and a company commander at the prison are suspended from their duties, and Sanchez admonishes Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the brigade.
- Jan. 19: Sanchez orders a separate administrative investigation into the 800th. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba was appointed to conduct that inquiry on Jan. 31.
- Late January-early February: President Bush becomes aware of the charges sometime in this time period, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, although the spokesman has not pinpointed a date. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tells Bush of the charges, McClellan has said.
- Feb. 2: Taguba visits Abu Ghraib. Throughout the month, his team conducts interviews in Iraq and Kuwait.
- March 12: Taguba presents his report to his commanders. He finds widespread abuse of prisoners by military police and military intelligence. He also agrees with Ryder that guards should not play any role in the interrogation of prisoners.
- March 20: Six soldiers face charges stemming from alleged abuse at the prison. The military announces the beginning of possible court-martial proceedings.
- Mid-April: Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asks CBS-TV to delay airing photographs it has obtained of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Myers says the photos would exacerbate an intense period of violence under way in Iraq. CBS delays its program for two weeks.
- April 6: Third Army commander Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan approves Taguba's report.
- April 28: CBS airs the photos, setting off an international outcry. Bush first learns about these photos from the television report, his aides say.
- April 30: The military announces Miller has been put in charge of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
- May 1: Sanchez approves Taguba's report. Six more soldiers receive administration reprimands; two are relieved of their duties. A seventh receives a lesser reprimand. Other investigations are also under way, including into the military intelligence unit that conducted interrogations at the prison.
- May 3: Bush urges Rumsfeld to make sure that any guilty U.S. soldiers are punished for "shameful and appalling acts." Rumsfeld's aides say he has not yet read the Taguba report, although they say he has kept abreast of the allegations of mistreatment.
- May 6: Bush apologizes to the Arab world for abuse, says Rumsfeld will stay in his Cabinet.
- May 7: Senate and House committees call Rumsfeld to testify. He apologizes for abuses. A seventh soldier from an Army Reserve military police is charged in a scandal.
- May 8: Miller blames the abuse at Abu Ghraib on poor leadership and disregard for the rules but says military has no plans to close the prison.
- May 9: U.S. military Sunday announces the first court-martial in Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, ordering Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., a reservist, to face a public trial in Baghdad on May 19.
- May 11: A video posted on an Islamic militant Web site shows the beheading of Nick Berg, a U.S. civilian whose body was found near in Baghdad on May 8. It says the execution was carried out by an al-Qaida affiliated group to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
- May 12: The military announces it will court-martial two more American soldiers, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II of Buckingham, Va., and Sgt. Javal Davis of Maryland.
- May 13: Rumsfeld goes to Abu Ghraib prison and insists the Pentagon did not try to cover up abuses there. A top general with him said he had given clear guidelines months ago on the humane way to question Iraqi prisoners.
- May 14: Nearly 300 Iraqi detainees are released from Abu Ghraib prison and military says more releases are planned. The Army says it has filed criminal charges, including adultery, against Military Police Cpl. Charles A. Graner.
- May 19: Davis, Graner and Frederick are arraigned in Baghdad and defer entering pleas. Judge sets new hearing in cases for June 21.