LONDON — International leaders on Saturday expressed horror at the Connecticut elementary school massacre, with Iran — at odds with the United States — calling the incident tragic and Pope Benedict conveying “heartfelt grief.”
Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, died in Friday’s shooting spree in the town of Newtown,Conn., including 20 children and six adults killed at the school and one adult killed at a nearby site, police said.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast described the killings as “tragic,” according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.
The spokesman observed that “the children and young adolescents falling victim to armed clashes in Gaza or in the U.S., in Afghanistan or Pakistan, in Iraq or Syria, are not different from each other from the humanitarian point of view, so everyone should make efforts to restore peace, security and tranquility to the whole world,” IRNA said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, condemned the “savage massacre of innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.”
“We in Israel have experienced such cruel acts of slaughter and we know the shock and horror they bring,” Netanyahu wrote.
Pope Benedict conveyed his “heartfelt grief” through Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
“In the aftermath of this senseless tragedy, he asks God our Father to console all those who mourn and to sustain the entire community with the spiritual strength which triumphs over violence by the power of forgiveness, hope and reconciling love,” Bertone said.
“Once again we’re completely aghast over an act that we can’t comprehend,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “An incredible suffering has been brought to so many families so close to Christmas.
“The thoughts over the schoolchildren and teachers killed weigh heavily on our hearts,” Merkel added.
Leaders from France, Britain and elsewhere sent their condolences on Friday.
Germany, France, Britain and other European countries have suffered similar mass shootings — one man killed 77 people in Norway last year. But commentators in Europe were quick to point to Americans’ much higher levels of personal gun ownership as a factor in the frequency of U.S. shootings.
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“We in Israel have experienced such cruel acts of slaughter and we know the shock and horror they bring,” Netanyahu wrote.” Your forgot to mention Mr Netanyahu that you have also dished out “such cruel acts of slaugter”. In the past few years,in fact, you’ve dished out far in excess of what you’ve received especially in the killing of children.
Sir, you need to grab a serious history book and start reading. Hamas, the PLO and every other Palestinian terror group has done everything it can to terrorize the Israelis. From bombing school bus’s to the massacre at Ma’llot (where 22 kids and their teachers died when the PLO shot their way in to a school in the north and then killed everyone in sight when the Israeli police arrvied) the Palestinians have done everything to provoke these incident’s.
And your statement that Israel has done worse needs a serious looksee. It has been practice for years by Hamas and the rest of the PA terror group’s the set up their bombmaking factories and weapons sites in, under or right next to school’s and hospitals in order to try and keep them from being bombed under international law. In Vietnam the North Vietnamese deliberately had their SAM missile site’s located right next to hospitals and schools for just this reason. Anyone that has flown a precison strike mission, like what the Israeli’s, and our own people in Gulf 1 and 2, are doing will tell you that no matter how well placed the counter, their is going to be collateral damage. The PA is inviting this and they dammed well know it. You want a zero collateral damage retailation strike, fine. Do it yourself and then tell us all about it. But don’t go crying when reality overcomes theory. It can be very, very expensive.
If you read my comment you’ll see that i said “in the past few years”. I didn’t go back 30 years like you have. If i were then I’d have to include the ethnic cleansing that Israel did during the ’48 war. Were there excesses on the part of the Palestinians of course there were just as there were excesses on the part of the Israeli’s. I notice how precision the Israeli strikes are,..precise enough to ensure many innocent die to get 1 or 2 who may or may not be innocent. A tank shell into a school yard where children were playing, a sniper killing a 12 year old girl trying to ge to safety. There comes a point when Israel can no longer claim they try to restrict “collateral damage” when that damage far exceeds the attack on so-called terrorists. You can continue to believe the Israeli lies, I stopped about 5 years ago. I say lies because Israel will permit no independant or international investigation into it’s excesses. That alone should tell you a lot, but…..
Oh as far reading history is concerned, I suspect I’ve read far more than you have.
There was no ethnic cleasing in 1948 Sir. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Muslim equivalent of their Pope, called for ALL Arabs to show their loyalty to the Islamic fatih and abandon their homes throughout the whole of Palestine. That the Grand Mufti was also, not so coincidentally, a wartime friend of Hitler, who provided the Grand Mufti a sick kind of asylum and propoganda mouthpiece, should be seen for what it is. When you listen to the PLO and the PA and their kind’s ‘Oh woe is me’ speech’s remember that the dislocation they so loudly cry about is of their own making. That the Palestinian’s refuse to realize that their own leadership is more than willing to kill their own people just to make some BS political statement is the real tragedy here, So is the fact that the real basis for this is still in history and that no one wants to find out the real why but, instead, be lead around by the nose by the politican’s and theatrical spinmaster’s like Rove, the Koch Brothers and the like. Objective history provides a clear view. Politican’s want only their own version told. You do the math and decide which bill you want to pay.
No ethnic cleansing in 1948? Really? So when even the Israeli’s themselves say they did ethnic cleansing they must be lying? Who really cares which side the Grand Mufti was on during WW2? I, for one, can hardly blame them for working with Hitler, after all it wasn’t Germany that had so brutally subjugated the Arab world, it was Enland and France. But just for the record you might want to look up places like Dir Yassin, Ein Zeitun, Ilabun, or Lydda. Or how about the operational orders in Operation Yiftah and Ben-Ami, “to attack in order to conquer, to kill the men, to destroy and burn the villages of Al-Kabri, Umm al Faraj, and An Nahar.” or perhaps the mass explusions during the Yoav Operation. Or perhaps “Plan D”. One Israeli soldier said “cultured officer…had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle…but out of a system of explusion and destruction; the less Arabs remained, the better; this pirinciple is the political motor for the expulsions and the atrocities.” Perhaps youy should read “The Book of Palmach” by two Israelis who talk about “Plan D”. This idea that the Arabs told the Palestinians to leave their homes out of loyality to the Islamic faith is merely one more Israeli fed lie/myth that so many have bought into. I suppose you don’t know that Israel was the first in the Middle East to hijack a civilian aircraft to get it way either. Do some reading and open your mind to something other than Israeli disinformation and you might learn something. I only started this thread because of the shear hypocracy of Netanyahu statements. I’ll now leave it alone and remember these children as they should be remembered.
Nice to have you outta the closet for all to see. Now we can all hold our historical nose.
LOL Can’t refute what I”ve said huh? Sometimes the truth hurts but if you check, which you won’t, you’ll find that I’m historically accurate. I assume out of the closet is somehow supposed to mean that I’m anti-jewish. I’m not. I am anti-Zionism. I am against one country and only one country being able to flout UN Resolutions with the full backing of the U.S. Then there are people like you. Too lazy or too brainwashed to seek the truth. Easier I guess just to hate the Palestinians isn’t it?