The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59792   Message #956120
Posted By: Teribus
20-May-03 - 09:16 AM
Thread Name: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
I originally read through the link in the post opening this thread. I then went to Google for more information regarding the scene of the shooting. In a number of the articles that appeared are a series of still photgraphs covering the actual shooting incident and an aerial picture of the cross-roads where the shooting took place.

Picture 1 -
Shows father and son hiding behind the concrete pipe section. Both are looking towards the IDF position. The up-ended concrete pipe section has what appears to be a flat paving slab on top of it and what looks like a kerb-stone or concrete block on top of that.

Picture 2 -
Shows the boy pressing into his fathers side, while the father's attention has obviously been attracted to something happening off to his right at approximately 90 degrees to any IDF line of fire from their post in the two story building. The shot shows three bullet pock-marks in the wall beside and to the left of father and son hiding behind the pipe section (the IDF are 110m away to the right). The spread, spacing and direction are characteristic of a three round burst from an automatic weapon. As the article describes they are round and appear to have been fired from the direction the father is looking in. The size of the pock-marks would appear to be greater than I would expect from an M-16 (5.56mm), but compatible with a rifle firing 7.62mm ammunition (AK-47 or derivative).

Picture 3 -
Not clear, the video camera has been swung upwards possibly indicating that these shots were fired close enough to the cameramans position to startle him (previous firing had not).

Picture 4 -
Shows the father seated head slightly down and to the left, his son is lying across his lap, in other words Mohammed's body has fallen to the right - towards the IDF position. The fourth photograph indicates with red arrows, two new bullet holes that were not in Picture 2. These pock-marks are lower down on the wall and again the holes are perfectly round and fully penetrate the wall, which indicates the unlikelyhood of them having been fired from the IDF position. The size of the pock-marks of these two bullets is also different from the ones shown in Picture 2, they are markedly smaller and appear to be compatible with what you would expect from a 5.56mm round fired from an M-16.

On first reading, I thought that this could be an inadvertent, or accidental shooting - an accident. But the story told by the photographs taken has the hall-marks of a deliberate act with not one but two gunmen, the first fired a burst that was designed to keep the targets pinned down, the second specifically armed for the job, the second firing from a second position close to the cameraman, did the actual killing.