Israelis kill 10 Palestinians in bloody day on the West Bank

By ABRAHAM RABINOVICH Herald corespondent

JERUSALEM - For the second time in a week, Israeli officials apologised yesterday for the accidental killing of Palestinian civilians by the armed forces on a bloody day in which 10 people died.

The apologies did not assuage the anger of Palestinians nor of a growing number of Israelis troubled by the Army's quick trigger finger.

According to Haaretz, 30 of 49 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in August by the Army were unarmed civilians. To this figure can apparently be added five Palestinian men killed after the paper went to press near an Israeli settlement. Initial indications were that they were innocent workmen returning from a night shift, Israel Radio reported.

"Mistakes are understandable," said Culture Minister Matan Vilnai. "But not when they keep happening like this one after the other."

The Army apology was for the killing in a helicopter strike of two children and two youths in a West Bank village. The rockets fired by the helicopters were aimed at a car being driven by a man wanted for terror activities. He escaped after the first rocket missed the car.

Two teenagers in the car were killed along with a man said to be a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Two children, aged 6 and 10, were killed by the rocket that missed the car.

Last week Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer apologised after a tank, firing at figures approaching an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip at night, hit a nearby Palestinian house, killing four members of one family.

"Something very troubling is happening here," wrote Nahum Barnea, Israel's leading political columnist, in Yediot Achronot. He noted that the killings come at a time when Ben-Eliezer is attempting, with some success, to reduce the level of violence through talks with Palestinian leaders. "What's the sense of heating things up again by initiated actions? The Palestinians will respond with a wave of violence and we will never know whether they were really prepared to stop terror or not."

Most of the civilians killed in the past month were killed during exchanges of fire between the Army and militants.

Feature: Middle East

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