Colony L5 "Zeon" is destroyed

The Federation launches a retaliatory strike on Zeon, targeting their home colony of Zeon L5.
  The large space station is mostly defenceless and the federation attack is merciless. 14 500 people are killed, most of them civilians. The militant Zeon rebels are nowhere to be seen.
  Voices are raised against the violence in both the Federation and in space, but the Federation government produces false evidence that shows a man known as Char Aznable as being the cause of the devastation in an act of rebellion and that the Federation was there to stop him but failed. This failure is blamed on the current structure of the Federation military, and the relative independence of the officers of the Federation. This inflexibility of the military is later used by President Yue as justification for the creation of Behemoth