2 Israeli Guards Mistakenly Killed by Own Troops
nytimes.com
13 March 2003
By GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, March 13 — Israeli troops and a helicopter gunship, on high alert for a possible Palestinian attack, opened fire with automatic weapons today in the southern West Bank and mistakenly killed two Israeli security guards in civilian clothes, the army said.
The shooting renewed a sharp debate on the Israeli Army's policies about when soldiers can open fire, rules that Palestinians and human rights groups say are often ignored.
The killings came on a day of scattered violence that included a gun battle in the northern West Bank village of Tamun, where Israeli troops came under fire. The soldiers shot back and killed four Palestinian attackers, the military said.
The army also acknowledged a second shooting error by its troops, in the northern Gaza Strip. An army foot patrol shot and wounded two Palestinian men handling pipes similar to a launching tube used to fire a rocket in the same area on Wednesday. In turned out that the men had been working with irrigation equipment and were not armed, the Israeli colonel who led the operation said.
The military expressed regret for the shootings, while critics said they were part of a larger pattern of soldiers firing before confirming the identity of their targets.
"This just shows that the army's open-fire policies don't require soldiers to give any warnings, and the result is that innocent people get killed and hurt," Lior Yavne, a spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, said.
Israeli officials also confirmed an unpublished report by the security services that put the number of Palestinian civilian deaths at 365 out of 1,949 Palestinians killed in the current round of Mideast fighting. Palestinian groups say the number of civilians killed is much higher and accounts for a large majority of the Palestinian dead.
On the Israeli side, more than 720 have been killed, the vast majority civilians, since the fighting erupted in September 2000.
In the West Bank, military reinforcements were directed to the area around Hebron after intelligence reports that Palestinian militants were preparing an assault, the army said. Soldiers spotted two armed men near a hilltop antenna station that included a mobile home used by workers, the army said.
The Israeli security guards had stopped to make coffee, witnesses said, and their white sedan had the name of their security company written on the side and the hood in red Hebrew letters.
The troops ordered the men to stop, but one jumped into the car and began driving away, the army said. Soldiers opened fire, piercing the car with dozens of bullets. The second man began running, but was killed when a helicopter swooped down and fired on him.
"I suddenly heard gunfire," a Palestinian worker, whose name was not given, told Israel radio. "We then saw the helicopter fire at the white car. We saw a missile being fired from the helicopter and hitting the car. It left him in pieces."
Maj. Sharon Feingold, an army spokeswoman, said the helicopter had fired a machine gun, not a missile.
The killings took place near the Jewish settlement of Pnei Hever, three miles southeast of Hebron, a place of chronic tension between Jewish settlers and Palestinians.
Recent shootings have put Hebron even more on edge. On Monday, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed an Israeli soldier and wounded five others before he himself was killed. On March 7, a pair of Palestinian militants gunned down a Jewish couple in their home. The attackers were then killed by Israeli troops.
In northern Gaza, Col. Yoel Strick, the Israeli commander for the area, took 12 soldiers on an extended hike through fields knee-deep in mud to show them where Palestinians had fired the rocket on Wednesday. As troops approached, they spotted the two Palestinian men and called for them to stay put.
"But they began running away in a suspicious manner," Colonel Strick said, expressing regret as he recounted the shooting. "When we make a mistake, we take responsibility, and we talk about it with the soldiers afterward." An army camera operator often accompanies troops on such missions, he said, and, if the troops fire improperly, the video tape is studied to prevent it from happening again.
One of the Palestinians was wounded in his left shoulder and left leg. He was bleeding profusely as Israeli soldiers put him on a stretcher atop an armored personnel carrier that rumbled about two miles over rugged terrain before reaching a military outpost just outside Gaza's border fence.
Wailing in pain, he was placed in a military ambulance and taken to an Israeli hospital in nearby Ashkelon. The second man was only grazed.
The Israeli military said that troops have strict instructions on opening fire. If soldiers do not feel their lives are in danger, they are supposed to give a verbal warning, followed by shots into the air, and then by shots into the ground and at the suspect's lower body.
But B'tselem and other human rights groups say that the procedure is often neglected and that soldiers are rarely prosecuted.
In central Jerusalem tonight, an Israeli father and son were shot and seriously wounded by a gunman as they were parking their car. The attack was in Jewish West Jerusalem, but not far from the city's traditionally Arab eastern part, and the police suspected it was political.
The report by the Israeli security services said that more than 1,250 of the Palestinians who have been killed were members of militant groups or suspected of "involvement in terrorism," and 329 were members of the Palestinian security forces.
Palestinian groups give a different breakdown, saying well over half of those killed were civilians. Palestinians usually classify their dead as civilians unless they were killed while carrying out an attack. Israel regards them as combatants if they are suspected of having links to militant groups. |
