Death from Above -- In These Times: "On June 22, the Operation Iraqi Freedom website issued a press release that hyped a devastating blow against 17 al-Qaeda terrorists, who were gunned down by coalition attack helicopters at Khalis, Iraq, a small town outside of Baqouba. But when the BBC visited the town days later, the villagers told a different story. The men attacked by coalition forces were not al-Qaeda members, but local village guards, who only minutes earlier had been helping Iraqi police raid a suspect’s house. (It turned out to be a false alarm.) Eleven of the men were killed when U.S. helicopters suddenly appeared, raining missiles and heavy machine gunfire upon them. “It was like a battlefront, but with the fire going only in one direction,” one local witness said. “There was no return fire.”"
Video: Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at 6-year-old children on their way to school The new school year started four days ago in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli soldiers have fired tear gas and hurled stun grenades at Palestinian elementary school students on at least two occasions already. In the Nablus -area village of Burin , which is surrounded by illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlements , Israeli forces stormed an elementary school Wednesday, firing tear gas and stun grenades at students after a settler’s vehicle traveling nearby the school was allegedly hit with a rock thrown by a Palestinian youth. Many children were treated at the scene for tear-gas inhalation, reported Ma’an News Agency . One day earlier, Israeli forces in Hebron fired up to 15 tear gas canisters and five stun grenades at small children as they made their way to school Tuesday morning. Video of the attack — recorded and posted to YouTube by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)...
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