JerPost

oby trap caused deaths of 5 Gaza schoolboys By Arieh O'Sullivan and Margot Dudkevitch

TEL AVIV (November 25) - IDF forces laid the bomb that accidentally killed five Palestinian schoolboys in Khan Yunis on Thursday, the army announced last night.

The IDF had remained silent over the cause of Thursday's deadly explosion except to say no tank had fired a shell in that sector. OC Gaza Strip Brig.-Gen. Yisrael Ziv is participating in the inquiry, but he himself may have been behind the decision to lay the bomb.

It was the first public announcement by the IDF since the deaths of Muhammad al-Astal, 14, his brother Akram, six, and their cousins Omer, 14, Annis, 10, and Ahmed, 10. The five children were walking to the nearby UN elementary school on Thursday morning when one of them apparently kicked the device, triggering the explosion.

The five were buried in Khan Yunis on Friday in a funeral attended by more than 10,000 people.

The bodies, wrapped in Palestinian flags and strapped to stretchers, were carried side-by-side in a procession as gunmen fired in the air. Children carried pictures of their dead classmates. Masked men wrote slogans on the walls of a mosque, threatening Israel with revenge.

Idress al-Astal, father of two of the dead children, said no investigation could bring back his sons. "God will grant me revenge," he said, breaking down in tears.

Military sources said that an IDF special force, acting on instructions from senior commanders, slipped into area A and laid the bomb. The idea was to set a trap in an area from which Palestinian gunmen had been repeatedly attacking Jewish settlements and IDF outposts.

It was a classic anti-guerrilla tactic, but it failed to take into account the possibility that others - such as children on their way to school - would venture into the area with tragic results.

"From the moment of the explosion an operational inquiry started examining the incident," an IDF statement said. "From an initial inquiry by OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog, the possibility arises that the children were killed as a result of playing with a bomb which an IDF force had set in a sandbagged position that had been used to shoot at and attack our forces." It noted that the position was not inside any urban area, but in an open field.

"The inquiry is not yet completed, and when it is all the necessary operational lessons will be drawn," the statement said.

"The IDF Spokesman stresses that the action in the open area was intended against terrorists and it expresses its regret for the death of the children," the statement said.

Both Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and the IDF issued official statements expressing regret for the boys' deaths.

While Ben-Eliezer was sorry for the "human tragedy that took the lives of innocents," he stopped short of taking actual responsibility for the explosive device. The defense minister said the explosion was being investigated.

Israel Radio quoted a high-ranking officer as saying the order to investigate the affair was a "grave mistake."

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Police chief in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaida, said the boys appeared to have been killed by a bomb planted by Israeli forces, who had been seen operating in the area the night before the blast.

"Shrapnel we collected from the area shows that the explosion was caused by an explosive device," he said.

"Our investigation continues, but it looks as if the device was booby-trapped and when one of the children kicked it, it exploded."

"We urge an international investigative committee to look into the murder of innocent children and to determine Israel's responsibility," he added.

On Friday Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh called on the army to launch a proper and fair inquiry of the incident, declaring the army's integrity is at stake.

"Someone may have to be punished if he acted improperly or acted with negligence," Sneh told Israel Radio, but added that the context of the tragedy is that "there is a terrorism and guerrilla war being waged against Israel."

Opposition leader Yossi Sarid called on the army to carry out an investigation and submit its findings this week to determine what was the cause and if action needs to be taken if misconduct is found. Speaking on Channel 1, he said: "Someone high up in the army will have to pay with his head. Children killed, whether on our side or theirs, is not something to be ignored."

Minister without Portfolio Dan Meridor took a similar view.

"If we really made a mistake, I hope we'll tell the truth about it," he said. "The truth is better than any excuse."

US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said of the incident: "The United States deeply regrets the tragic accidental deaths of five Palestinian children... when they came in contact with unexploded ordnance. It was a terrible tragedy."

"We understand that the Israeli army has begun an investigation into the circumstances of these deaths and we expect that investigation will thoroughly determine what happened. This incident... is a strong reminder of why both sides should do all they can to end the violence, reduce tensions, and resume negotiations," he added.

(Janine Zacharia and news agencies contributed to this report.)

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001