What’s missing from this story?

Update: Ha’aretz says it was a rocket fired at Israel that fell on a house in Beit Lahiya. Looks like the AP was played.

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing an eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister, and injuring five other children.

The rocket, fired at Israel, fell short and hit the children’s house in the village of Beit Lahiya. No group claimed responsibility.

See if you can spot the missing elements of this AP story:

Explosion in Gaza Kills Child

Headline is vague regarding what caused the explosion. A gas line break? A propane tank? Or perhaps a “crude, homemade rocket”? You know it wasn’t an IDF missile, because then the headline would be “Israel Kills Child in Gaza.”

A large explosion in northern Gaza on Tuesday killed an 8-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister and injured five other children, Palestinian health officials said.

Witnesses said a group of children stumbled upon a homemade rocket or a mortar shell and began playing with it. The device exploded, injuring all seven children, two of whom died later of their wounds.

Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian health official, said the explosion occurred in the village of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, and the wounded were evacuated to hospital.

We are now three paragraphs in, and have no idea where that “homemade rocket” or mortar could possibly have come from. You know it can’t be from the IDF, because if it was from the IDF, the sentence would read “stumbled upon an unexploded missile or mortar shell left by the IDF during an incursion into Gaza” followed by “The IDF makes regular incursions into Gaza in pursuit of militants.”

The explosion is in Beit Lahiya. Hm. Why is that village name so familiar? Let’s think. Think, think, think.

The Kamal Adwan hospital identified the dead children as Wesam Abed Allah and his sister Hala.

The area is a frequent launching pad for militants who fire rockets toward Israel.

Oh, look. Five paragraphs in—which is too late for many “World News” sections of newspapers, which stop at paragraph three, the AP article identifies Beit Lahiya as one of the favorite places “militants” like to fire “crude, homemade rockets” into Israel. (Note the AP use of the word “toward” Israel, as if the “militants” are only just joshin’. They don’t really want to try to kill Israeli children. The correct word would be “into,” but then, the AP can weasel-word its way out of this because some rockets actually fall on Gazans (and have killed them before).

And last, the final paragraph of the piece:

No Palestinian group accused the army of the explosion. The army often targets militants in air strikes in the region.

Which army? The Hamas army? The PA army? Oh, wait. The Israeli army. Of course. Interesting how the article doesn’t even mention which army isn’t accused. Now, that may be an editing slip. I’ve seen it more than a few times, making me wonder if the AP even has copy editors. Or if perhaps they’ve just decided that everyone knows they mean the Israeli army, and they aren’t even bothering to hide the bias anymore.

Other notes on the article: The children have names and ages, where Israeli victims of Arab terrorist attacks are rarely named, only identified by gender and whether they’re an adult or a child (and not even that, sometimes). And surprisingly, no terrorist representative is blaming this one on Israel. Perhaps even they know when the media won’t bite on a clear lie. Or perhaps they’re catching on to the fact that the blogosphere is now on the lookout for fauxtography and false stories.