The father of one of four Palestinian children killed on a Gaza City beach during last summer’s war between Hamas and Israel has said he is outraged that an Israeli investigation into the killings has been closed without finding anyone culpable for their deaths.

The comments by Mohammed Bakr came as new questions emerged about both the scope and the accuracy of the findings of the Israeli military police inquiry.

“There is no justice in the internal investigation,” Bakr said on Friday. “We are counting on the ICC [international criminal court] and human rights. We are not afraid and we are confident we will win because the world is with us.”

Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 11, Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, both 10, and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, nine, were killed on 16 July last year when they were hit by explosive rounds. Three of the boys died as they tried to run from the beach after the first child was killed.

The Israeli military announced on Thursday evening that the “extensive” criminal inquiry into the case had been closed because it was deemed to be a “tragic accident”.

After a review of the investigation’s findings, Danny Efroni, Israel’s military advocate general, found that the process used in the attack “accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements”.

But among troubling issues to have emerged since the Israeli military closed its investigation is the fact that not all witnesses to the incident were interviewed by Israeli investigators, despite comments by Efroni’s office suggesting it would do so.

The incident came to global prominence because it took place in front of a number of international media organisations, including the Guardian and the New York Times.

The killing of four children on a beach in Gaza was one of the most controversial incidents in last summer’s Gaza war. Link to video

The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.

“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.”

Although pro-Israel social media activists at first made strenuous efforts to claim the deaths were the result of one of Hamas’s own rockets falling short, the IDF later admitted its own munitions were responsible.

Several weeks after the attack – announcing it was launching investigations into a number of controversial incidents in which civilians died – the military advocate general’s office briefed more than a dozen journalists. The senior Israeli officer was asked by reporters then if investigators would seek to contact all witnesses. The officer replied in the affirmative.

In reality, however, it appears no effort was made to contact a number of the journalists who witnessed the incident – including this correspondent. A handful of Palestinian witnesses supplied information by affadavit.





The IDF’s closure of the case comes at a highly sensitive time for Israel over the conduct of last year’s war. The UN is expected to publish a report on the conflict and there are reports that a delegation from the ICC may visit later this month as part of its preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed by both sides.

Israel has, in the past, pointed to the credibility of its internal investigations as proof that the involvement of the ICC was unnecessary.

As the IDF announced it was closing the case having found no criminal culpability among its servicemen over the attack, the IDF’s chief spokesman, Peter Lerner, described the investigation as “extensive” in a post on Facebook.

According to Lerner: “From the factual findings collected by the investigators, it revealed that the incident took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos), and which was utilised exclusively by militants.

“The compound in question spans the length of the breakwater of the Gaza City seashore, closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population.

“It further found in the course of the investigation (including from the affidavits provided by Palestinian witnesses), that the compound was known to the residents of the Gaza Strip as a compound which was used exclusively by Hamas’s Naval Police.”

Several foreign journalists present at the time of the incident disputed that claim to the Guardian on Friday, echoing the Guardian’s own observations.

Indeed, far from being used “exclusively” by Hamas, the site of the initial attack – an area of several makeshift structures on the breakwater itself and where the first boy died – is regularly used by fishermen, and is immediately adjacent to, and accessible from, the public beach in Gaza port.

Clearly visible to journalists staying in the Al Deira hotel, it is far from being the site of obvious militant activity, appearing largely deserted – at least during daylight hours – and with little obviously discernible evidence of any nighttime boat launches.

The IDF’s statement said a container on the breakwater which had been attacked the day before was being used by Hamas as a storage facility for weapons. Journalists, however, who visited it in the immediate aftermath of the attack saw no weapons or equipment.



Usually reliable sources told the Guardian on Friday that they believed the container had been “incriminated” by Israeli intelligence, making it a potential target because it belonged to the equivalent of Hamas’s coastguard, even if it was empty. Its incrimination, in effect, meant anyone approaching it could be engaged.

Pictures posted on Facebook on Friday by the Daily Telegraph correspondent Robert Tait, who photographed the scene of the strike in its immediate aftermath, show twisted metal and scattered rubble but no sign of any military material.

Another question – unanswered by the IDF – relates to aerial oversight of the scene before the attack. According to the IDF, “civilian presence in the area had been ruled out”, including by the deployment of “real-time visual surveillance”.

According to multiple media and other witnesses, children had been playing football in the vicinity immediately before the attack.

One Israeli military expert at the time expressed his surprise that those conducting the surveillance were unable to distinguish between children and Hamas militants, when the children were clearly identifiable as they fled from several hundred metres away before the second strike.



An Israeli military spokesman had not replied to questions put to it by the Guardian at the time of publication on Friday afternoon.

However, a spokesman said on Saturday that the site was under full control of Hamas and that intelligence suggested Hamas militants were planning to use it to launch an operation.

Regarding the concerns that not all witnesses had been interviewed by investigators, he said: “They were presented with a number of witnesses’ names who, following several attempts to coordinate their testimonies being given to the investigative military police, refrained from coming to present their testimonies.”

