Annan: Ambulance Did Not Carry Rocket

[Florida_Geek]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Israel-Palestinian.html
nnan: Ambulance Did Not Carry Rocket
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 13, 2004

Filed at 5:37 p.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Israel has acknowledged that a U.N. ambulance in Gaza was carrying a stretcher -- not a rocket as it claimed earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman asked Annan to investigate Peter Hansen, head of the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, after the Israeli army released video taken by an unmanned aircraft flying over the Jebaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israel, which has long accused the U.N. Relief and Works Agency of bias, said the footage showed militants loading a rocket into an ambulance with U.N. markings on its roof. The United Nations immediately denied the accusation and said the footage showed a worker loading a stretcher into an ambulance.

Palestinian rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in Jebaliya after he heard that someone there may have been wounded. But the wounded boy had already been moved so he returned to the car, folded the stretcher, ``and threw it inside,'' he said.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it might have been mistaken when it accused the agency, known as UNRWA, of transporting a rocket to militants. The statement stopped short of clearly admitting an error.


..more at AP

[Judi Lynn]

1. Either they were hot for a reason to impugn U.N. presence

or they need better interpreters of the information they are getting from their drones!

[Zhade]

2. Let me just higlight something for the Sharon apologists here...

Israel has acknowledged that a U.N. ambulance in Gaza was carrying a stretcher -- not a rocket as it claimed earlier this month...

I'd wait for those who slandered the U.N. as terrorist-enablers to admit their mistake, but then we'd be waiting forever.

And, even though this is about Israel and the U.N., not I/P, watch it get moved into the basement very quickly.

[MrPrax]

3. Probably a fair assessment....

Liabled to get locked or something...

[daleo]

4. In a wider sense, it shows how tenuous intelligence can be

Throw this in the mixmaster with the failed intelligence regarding the hostage rescue attempts (the hostages were nowhere near where intelligence said they might be), among other items. It casts claims such as that "credible intelligence" led to the need to blow up houses and restaurants willy-nilly in Falluja, into a different light.