It was one of the most tragic and heartbreaking scenes from last year’s Gaza War:  Four little boys, aged nine-, ten-, and eleven-years old, were cut down by an Israel Air Force strike as their played on a Gaza beach.  Today, Israel’s military exonerated itself in the killings.

The statement released by the military claimed that the Palestinian boys were playing hide and seek in an area that was known to be a terrorist hotbed.  “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 utilized exclusively by militants,” it read.

But international reporters were located there as well, in hotels with a clear view of the beach.  And they saw no such compound, just a small and rickety fisherman’s hut with a few tools where the little cousins had been playing hide-and-seek. 

Explosives came down from the sky, killing eleven-year old Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, ten-year olds Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, and nine-year old Ismail Mahmoud Bakr.  Three were killed as they tried to get away from the beach when the first boy died.  Two more Bakr cousins and another man were wounded by shrapnel.

These findings as Israel is under investigation for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and will likely raise questions about how Israel investigates its forces who kill civilians.

More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day Gaza War, and the vast majority of them were civilians.  On the Israeli side 73 people were killed, of them 67 soldiers.