The Israeli army was yesterday investigating a humiliating fiasco that saw three of its elite soldiers killed by their colleagues during a failed attempt to capture an alleged Hamas bomber. "There was a serious operational failure," said Gen Shaul Mofaz, the army's chief of staff.
Members of a crack army unit entered the West Bank village of Assira Ashmalia on Saturday and surrounded a building in which they believed Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, described by Israel as the "most wanted Hamas activist in the West Bank", was believed to be hiding. In a gunfight that began in darkness shortly before 10 p.m., Abu Hanoud was injured, but he and a second Palestinian fired back at the Israelis from the roof of the building. Israeli troops on the ground apparently wrongly identified the source of this gunfire, and fired back at another, adjacent rooftop, on which three of their colleagues were deployed, killing them all.
In the confusion, Abu Hanoud was able to escape the ring of troops and flee. And in a second foul-up during the subsequent chase, a fourth Israeli soldier was injured in another exchange of fire, again by a colleague. Abu Hanoud managed to find his way to the nearby West Bank city of Nablus, where he was taken to hospital under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, said last night his security forces had a "primary responsibility" to hunt down men like Abu Hanoud, who he said had orchestrated bombings that killed "dozens of Israelis". The most serious attacks alleged to have been planned by Abu Hanoud (35), were two suicide bombings in Jerusalem in 1997 - on the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall, and at the Mahene Yehuda fruit market - in which some 20 Israelis were killed. Five bombers died in these blasts; four of them came from his home village of Assira Ashmalia.
Saturday's fiasco is a blow to Israeli army morale and a boost to Hamas, whose militants, according to Israeli and US intelligence sources, have been trying without success to carry out suicide bombings in recent months in an attempt to frustrate peace moves. Last week, the army killed an elderly Palestinian man in another botched raid. And its forced evacuation from the "security zone" in south Lebanon three months ago was widely seen as a victory for Hizbullah guerrilla fighters.
Nevertheless, military officials pointed yesterday to a series of successes - by their own units, and those of Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority - in the battle against the Islamic extremist bombers, including the killing earlier this year in another West Bank raid of several Hamas activists armed with "suitcase bombs", the arrest or killing of other alleged bomb planners, and the discovery of a "bomb factory" in Nablus last month, linked to Abu Hanoud.
Israeli officials stressed last night that the army had acted within its rights in entering the village, which is in a West Bank area defined as "B-plus". This designation means that day-today life is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, which also has a local police station, but overall security is still in Israeli hands.
Once Abu Hanoud entered Nablus, however, which is defined as Area "A", he came under full Palestinian jurisdiction, and the authority's West Bank security chief, Mr Jibril Rajoub, has flatly ruled out his extradition to Israel. "Over our dead bodies," he said. "The Israelis made a mistake and paid the price."