Reuters has released a video (see below) show­ing what appears to be the Israeli tank fir­ing the round that — it’s claimed — killed cam­era­man Fadel Shana.

The first thing to note is the dis­tance that Shana is from the tank, prob­ably a Merkava 4 with a 105mm gun fir­ing flechette rounds. Flechettes?

Flechettes are razor-sharp 3.75mm darts released from can­nis­ters that explode in mid-air and spray thou­sands of them in an arc some 300 metres long and 90 metres wide.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) gen­er­ally fires them in 105mm tank shells. Accord­ing to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the IDF is using a mod­i­fied ver­sion of US-supplied M494 105mm APERS-T rounds, acquired in the 1970s.

Accord­ing to the Israeli Supreme Court:

the use of the flechette is restric­ted to areas [Hebrew. gizra, is closer to “sec­tor”, imply­ing a more closed, delin­eated area] in which the danger to inno­cent civil­ians is not actual, and only against those sus­pec­ted of activ­ity that endangers IDF sol­diers or Israeli citizens.

If my maths is right — big if, and if it was a flechette — that gives an arc with an area of nearly 13,500 square metres (the pitch at Wemb­ley is 7,140). That is a large space for every­one within it to be sus­pec­ted of activ­ity endan­ger­ing Israeli sol­diers or cit­izens. Rid­ing a bicycle or film­ing for Reu­ters or just being a kid wouldn’t quite seem to do it.

Of course, Hamas reg­u­larly sends unguided Katy­usha and Qas­sam rock­ets into densely pop­u­lated parts of Israel (today’s lis­ted here) in the hope of killing who­ever hap­pens to be under­neath when they go off.

We hope, of course, that the IDF is more dis­crim­in­ate in its counter-butchery.

And hope is prob­ably the right word if you are lob­bing a couple of Wembley-sized pitch-fulls of death over a couple of kilometres.

Is every­one beneath a ter­ror­ist? Using flechettes implies either reck­less­ness with regard to civil­ian cas­u­al­ties or neg­li­gence or well…just not really giv­ing a damn about who hap­pens to be under­neath at the time.

It doesn’t exactly guar­an­tee the “sur­gical” pre­ci­sion which mil­it­ary types (of all nation­al­it­ies) like to ascribe to their work. Just the usual crime of guilt by vir­tue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now press play…