Qassams continue as Olmert vows to keep up assassinations

By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service
and The Associated Press 23 June 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/730163.html

Palestinians continued firing Qassam rockets on southern Israel on Friday, a
day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to continue assassinating
rocket-launching cells despite growing numbers of Palestinian civilian
casualties.

On Friday noon a mortar shell landed near the Kerem Shalom community on the
southern Gaza Strip border, Israel Radio reported. No casualties or damage
were reported.

Earlier, Gaza militants fired three Qassam rockets at the Sderot area,
causing no injuries.

Olmert apologized "from the depths of my being" for civilian deaths in
recent airstrikes in Gaza, but said in his closing speech at the Caesarea
economic conference in Jerusalem on Thursday that "pinpoint preventions" of
terror attacks would continue anyway.

"Israel will continue to carry out targeted attacks against terrorists and
those who try to harm Israeli citizens," Olmert said. "I value the lives and
the welfare of the residents of Sderot as much as, if not more than, those
of the residents of Gaza."

After two Palestinian civilians were killed and 14 others wounded Wednesday
night, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff ordered a thorough
investigation of the string of recent Gaza air strikes in which Palestinian
civilians were killed.

The dead and wounded - all members of the same family - were hit in an
Israel Air Force strike in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, the chief of the air force told Haaretz that air strikes are
nearly the only military option in Gaza.

The attack comes a day after three children were killed in an IAF strike in
Gaza City that targeted members of Fatah's military wing. Wednesday's strike
was the fourth incident in one month that IAF strikes in Gaza have resulted
in civilian fatalities, and brings the total of Palestinian civilian deaths
to 14.

Olmert, in his first, informal face-to-face meeting with Abbas at a
conference in Jordan on Thursday said he felt "regret" over the civilian
deaths, a source in the Prime Minister's Office said.

The prime minister nevertheless defended the air strikes. "I feel a deep
regret over the death of innocents, but there is no moral equivalence
between Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel and Israeli army operations,
because the army does not intend to hurt innocents," the source quoted him
as telling Abbas.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Wednesday that the IDF has clear
instructions to call off an attack if there is a chance that innocent people
would be endangered.

IDF Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, ordered IAF Commander Major General Elyezer
Shkedy to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the string of recent
failed strikes.

An initial probe of Wednesday's attack revealed that it was caused either by
human or technical error.

Peretz said Wednesday that the IDF has clear instructions to call off an
attack if there is a chance that innocent people would be endangered.

Shkedy told Haaretz that the IAF has not found a common denominator among
the four incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed. Initial
findings suggest a combination of human error and technical failures, he
added.

In Wednesday night's incident, the road chosen for the attack was relatively
isolated, but the point against which the missiles were fired was
problematic, because it was not possible to maintain eye contact between the
air vehicle and the target. It is also possible that there was a programming
malfunction in the missiles.

"We carry out attacks in the Gaza Strip daily," Shkedy said. "The air
operations are nearly the only way to operate in Gaza. The other option is a
land operation, and we must do everything possible to avoid that."

"Every strike on civilians is very bad," the air force chief said. "It is
troubling on an ethical level, and it also makes it difficult for us to
maintain pressure on the terrorist organizations."

Shkedy said that the militants have changed their mode of action, and have
begun launching rockets within residential areas to make air attacks against
them more difficult.

"Fighting against them (the militants) is becoming more complicated every
day," Shkedy said. "But we will continue fighting terror, and that includes
air attacks. That is our duty."

The air force chief said that he authorized a small number of senior
officers to act as "controllers" in the aerial attacks.

"These are people I trust completely," Shkedy said. "They have enormous
experience in such attacks, and we rely on their judgment, even if it turns
out that sometimes errors are made."

Three children were among the wounded in Wednesday's strike. Medical
personnel in Gaza said the injuries were caused by shrapnel and that some of
the wounded were in critical condition.

The 37-year-old woman killed in the strike, Fatima El-Barbarwi, was seven
months pregnant. The other casualty was her brother, a 45-year-old doctor
named Zakariya Ahmed residing in Saudi Arabia.

Ahmed was visiting his sister in Gaza and the family had settled down for
the evening meal when they were hit by the missile. A pool of blood marked
the floor in their kitchen.

Doctors tried to save the woman's seven-month-old fetus, but failed, they
said.

Palestinian witnesses said the apparent target of the IAF strike had been a
jeep carrying members of the Popular Resistance Commmittees but the missile
struck the house instead. A witness said the vehicle carrying the
Palestinian militants passed by the house as the explosion occurred. The men
inside jumped out of the car and ran into a nearby field.

A spokeswoman expressed regret at the death of El-Barbarwi. The Israel Air
Force had fired the missile as the car travelled in a relatively unpopulated
area on the outskirts of Khan Yunis, to avoid civilian death as had happened
in previous attacks,

A statement from Abbas' office harshly condemned the Israeli attacks.

"The increased frequency of women and children falling victims to Israeli
missiles, in an age of very precise electronic warfare, indicates a
deliberate intention on the Israeli part to target every Palestinian and to
cause maximum human, physical, and psychological damage," it said.