October 25, 2007 | 6:56 am

Militants use Google Earth to attack Israel

From the Guardian, via Seraphic Secret:

Palestinian militants are using Google Earth to help plan their attacks on the Israeli military and other targets, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes.

“We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas,“ Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian.

Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets.

The Guardian filmed an al-Aqsa test rocket launch, fired into an uninhabited area of the Negev desert, last month. Despite the crudeness of the weapons, many have landed in Sderot, killing around a dozen people in the last three years and wounding scores more.

One of the saving graces for people living alongside the Gaza border has been the limited accuracy of Kassam rockets. But if Palestinian militants know what they’re aiming at, I fear casualties might become more common.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 0 Comments — Leave your comment

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