Olmert 'deep regret' over UN peacekeeper deaths
Israel’s prime minister expressed “deep regret” today over the killing of UN peacekeepers in an Israeli airstrike, but rejected UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s charge that the bombing of the UN position was apparently deliberate.
Four UN observers were killed in the rubble of a UN post hit by an Israeli bomb yesterday.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Annan in a phone call today that the UN post was hit inadvertently.
“The prime minister expressed Israel’s deep regret over the mistaken killing of four UN peacekeepers,” Olmert said in a statement released by his office.
“The prime minister said he has instructed the military to carry out a thorough investigation and that the results will be shared with the UN secretary general.”
Olmert expressed dismay over Annan’s initial comments that the air strike on the UN post was “apparently deliberate”.
“It’s inconceivable for the UN to define an error as an apparently deliberate action,” Olmert said.
Annan had demanded an Israeli investigation of the attack.
Since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants began two weeks ago, there have been several dozen incidents of firing close to UN peacekeepers and observers, including direct hits on nine positions, some of them repeatedly, a UN official said.
As a result of these attacks, 12 UN personnel have been killed or injured, UN officials said.
Yesterday’s bomb hit the building and shelter of the observer post in the town of Khiam near the eastern end of the border with Israel, said Milos Struger, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
During an Israeli offensive against Lebanon in 1996, artillery blasted a UN base at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 civilians taking refuge with the peacekeepers.
The UN mission, which has nearly 2,000 military personnel and more than 300 civilians, is to patrol the border line, known as the Blue Line, drawn by the UN after Israel withdrew troops from south Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
Defence analyst Reuven Pedatzur of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz also said he was sure the airstrike was an operational error, saying the mishap could have happened for a variety of reasons.
Stressing that he was not privy to any detailed information about the event, Pedatzur speculated the error could have happened merely from entering the wrong co-ordinates on a target, though this was more likely in the case of artillery fire. Another option was getting the target wrong altogether, he said.
“I have no doubt that this was a mistake. It would have to be total insanity for that to happen (deliberately),” he said. “There is no logic to that, people here are not crazy enough to do something like this.”
