**LEAD STORY**
A very serious question has been emerging since the unfortunate Isreali artillery bombardment of the United Nations compound in the Lebanese village of Qana. During the Isreali Operation "Grapes of Wrath", the compound was hit by an artillery barrage on 18 April 1996 that resulted in the deaths of between 91 and 105 people, mostly Lebanese civilian refugees. The exact number of dead is not known because of some of the ordnance that the IDF used, there were simply too many shredded body parts to make an exact count.
Questions, of late, have arisen whether or not the attack was deliberately intended to inflict civilian deaths and injuries. The Lebanese and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah terrorist organization, of course, say yes. Isreal says no to the charges, and that the incident was an unfortunate accident.
The United Nations conducted its own investigation. Major-General Franklin van Kappen, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's top military advisor, submitted a six-page report that was highly critical of the IDF. Van Kappen said in his report, "The shelling of the U.N. compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors."
While conducting his eight-day investigation, van Kappen made a very detailed study that found that at least 36 Isreali shells had landed in or near the U.N. camp. The shelling was concentrated on two specific areas. The first area was located 120 yards south of the compound. This area was hit almost entirely, except for one round, by impact-fuzed shells. These shells explode when they hit the ground. They are mostly used to destroy equipment and ordnance. These artillery rounds to the south of the camp landed very close to where Hezbollah guerrillas had been firing a mortar at a nearby IDF ground unit.
The second area that was struck was the U.N. compound itself. The camp was hit by a large number of proximity-fuzed shells. These type of shells are designed to detonate above the ground to widen the radius of impact.
But the question remains -- what was the Isreali's intentions? There is no question that the Isrealis were provoked to attack by deadly Hezbollah mortar fire. After the guerrillas fired their mortar rounds, at least two or three guerrillas reportedly entered the U.N. camp. The Isrealis apparently knew this. How did they know it? Some United Nations officials say privately that the IDF knew exactly what it was doing when it fired upon the U.N. base. The IDF allegedly bombed the mortar site first and then turned its attention to the compound and hit it with at least eight of the airburst shells in hopes of hitting the guerrillas.
Major-General van Kappen's report did not explicitly say that the attack was deliberate. The report did point to some discrepancies in the response of the Isrealis. The most serious discrepancy pointed out in the report contradicts the IDF argument that the incident was an "accident." The pattern of the shells suggests that it was not, as the IDF said, "a couple of stray shells" that hit the compound. The report said that the U.N base was struck with five impact-fuzed shells and eight proximity-fuzed shells.
Van Kappen said, "When I went there, I believed the Isreali Army, a few shells had just overshot. I was there only ten minutes when I knew that theory was in deep trouble. This was not a simple overshoot."
The Isrealis have claimed that the U.N. report is grossly unfair. But several experts, analysts and journalists have told ENN that the Isrealis have contradicted themselves several times in their effort to explain what happened. The IDF does say, in a report acquired by ENN, that the shelling of the U.N. base was a combination of a map-reading error and differing muzzle velocities.
In their report, dated 9 May 1996, the Isrealis said, "It became apparent that two mistakes had occurred in the IDF headquarters during the approval process of the artillery mission against the mortar site. First - the coordinates available at the headquarters for the UN base in Qana were incorrect, resulting in the UN base being thought to be some 100 meters further away from the target mortar site than it actually was. Second -- the range from the UN base was calculated from a point in the center of the base, not taking into account the actual width of the base. As a result of these two errors, while IDF headquarters believed the UN base to be located some 350 meters from the target point, in fact the outer perimeter of the base was only some 180 meters distant."
The IDF report gave the times that the mission began, "The first battery executed its fire mission between approximately 1407 and 1411 (hours) and the second battery executed its fire mission between approximately 1411 and 1417. In total, both batteries fired some 78 shells at their targets."
The IDF said that it could not stop the attack in time, after it was communicated to the IDF headquarters that they were firing upon a U.N. base. The report said, "At 1416 the IDF received initial reports of artillery hits on the Qana UN camp. These reports were too late to stop the fire missions. As a result, the IDF immediately diverted the aforementioned RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle...a drone airplane that is equipped with a camera.), in order to ascertain the validity of the reports. Upon reaching the area of the Qana camp, the RPV was unable to transmit a clear picture of the area, although one can see in the RPV camera film that the camp had already been hit."
Ronald W. Lewis, the chief military analyst of The Intellisys Group, a military/national security "think tank", similar to ERRI, strongly believes that the Isreali attack on the U.N. compound was deliberate. Lewis said in a recent analysis of the Qana incident, "It is extremely unlikely that the Isrealis would fire artillery anywhere without the use of either a drone or a forward observation team, either of which would have told the Isreali artillery directors that their guns were striking a UN camp. The same radar that told them the location of the enemy rockets would also have told them they were missing them."
Lewis added, "As for Isreali claims that the drone was too far away to see civilians in the compound, it doesn't matter: Qana was well known as a UN compound and never should have been fired upon, with or without civilians. Isreali military orders prohibit artillery strikes within 350 meters of a UN compound, yet the Hezbollah rocket and mortar positions were within 150 meters of the base."
On top of all of this, the London-based Observer newspaper last weekend reported that the IDF had established a new top secret commando group called Egoz. It is believed that this unit, whose mission is to hunt down Hezbollah members, was acting as a forward observation team and was attempting to extract itself from the area when the artillery bombardment was ordered. Could it had been that the Egoz unit saw the Hezbollah guerrillas enter the Qana UN camp and directed the fire there? Or, was the artillery fire designed to cover the extrication and withdrawal of the secret unit from a on-going firefight? The Isrealis officially deny having any ground resources in the area.
What REALLY happened? That question will probably never be fully answered. The truth probably lies in a combination of all of the known evidence. The real facts of the circumstances in Qana may remain hidden somewhere in a classified report, or may have never been adequately recorded in the midst of an on-going battle and the infamous "fog of war."
Historians point to a similar situation that happened during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A U.S. plane bombed a large Iraqi shelter in Baghdad. Reportedly, a large number of civilians were killed in that air raid. American officials said that the shelter, according to allied intelligence, was being used by top Iraqi military and Baath Party officials. A conflict about the actual use of the bunker remains a mystery, even today.
It is unfortunate that such incidents happen in a battlefield environment. Even with good human and technical intelligence, war is a fast-moving endevour where, especially in this day and age, split-second decisions must to be made. Errors in judgement are, unfortunately, sometimes likely to happen. Regardless of the real answers or factual reasons that the Qana UN base was struck by Isreali artillery -- one must draw the conclusion that the end result was an error in judgement and sincerely hope that the IDF would take a different course, were they faced with a similar situation again.
(c) EmergencyNet News Service, 1996, All Rights Reserved.