Israel shelled UN observers for HOURS?

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Why would they do this? (The Guardian has the story.) I just don't get it. Is there something Israel has to gain from attacking this post? Could they really have been attacking it for hours by mistake? Here's the Guardian (HT: Marsh):

"I spoke to Mr Olmert and he definitely believes it was a mistake and has expressed his deep sorrow, " Mr Annan told a press conference in Rome. "But the shelling started in the morning and went on until after 7pm. You cannot imagine the anguish of the unarmed men and women peacekeepers who were there."

The four monitors came from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Tonight, European Union and Chinese officials condemned the attack as "unacceptable" and the Irish government filed an official complaint to Israel after its senior UN peacekeeper made half a dozen warning calls over the bombings.

Jane Lute, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, told the UN security council that the base came under close Israeli fire 21 times - including 12 hits within 100 metres and four direct hits - from 1.20pm until contact was lost with the four peacekeepers inside at 7.17pm.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The attack on the UN outpost hauntingly resembles the 1967 assault on USS Liberty - about which the then senior US military officer said:
"To suggest that they [the IDF] couldn't identify the ship is ... ridiculous. ... Anybody who could not identify the Liberty could not tell the difference between the White House and the Washington Monument."
-- Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and later Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted in The Washington Post, June 15, 1991, p. 14


Details of the attack and so-far-unavailing protests about the coverup can be found here:

http://www.ussliberty.org/
1:54 AM, July 30, 2006
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