Olmert: ‘Deep Regret’ Over Peacekeepers
07/26/2006
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (AP) - Israel’s prime minister expressed “deep regret” Wednesday over the killings of four U.N. peacekeepers in an airstrike and dismay over U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s accusation the bombing was “apparently deliberate.”
The observers were killed in the rubble of a U.N. post in Lebanon hit by an Israeli bomb Tuesday.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Annan in a phone call Wednesday that the U.N. post was hit inadvertently.
“The prime minister expressed Israel’s deep regret over the mistaken killing of four U.N. 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 U.N. secretary general.”
Olmert expressed dismay over Annan’s initial comments that the airstrike was “apparently deliberate.”
“It’s inconceivable for the U.N. 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 U.N. peacekeepers and observers, including direct hits on nine positions, some of them repeatedly, a U.N. official said.
As a result of these attacks, 12 U.N. personnel have been killed or injured, U.N. officials said.
Tuesday’s bomb hit the building and shelter of the observer post in Khiam near the eastern end of the border with Israel, said Milos Struger, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
During an Israeli offensive against Lebanon in 1996, artillery blasted a U.N. base at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 civilians taking refuge with the peacekeepers.
The U.N. 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 United Nations after Israel withdrew troops from south Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
On Wednesday, dovish lawmaker Ran Cohen, a colonel in the Israeli army reserves, said that from his experience in Lebanon it was quite possible to make such a mistake.
“I have not even the slightest doubt that we’re talking here about a mistake, technical or otherwise. The army, as long as I’ve known it and I’m fairly critical, never wants to hit UNIFIL forces,” Cohen said.