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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Reports say UN official killed by Israeli soldier |
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| Red |
| 11/23/02 at 14:30:00 |
| Israeli Radios Say Soldier Killed UNRWA Official http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1312&ncid=1312&e=1&u=/nm/20021123/wl_nm/mideast_unrwa_death_dc_1 JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli radio stations said on Saturday that an initial military inquiry found that an Israeli soldier shot and killed a U.N. relief worker after mistaking a cellular telephone he was holding for a grenade. A spokesman for the United Nations (news - web sites) Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said Iain Hook, manager of a UNRWA project to rehabilitate the Jenin refugee camp, was shot while moving outside the trailer-van offices in the UNRWA compound during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp. Israel Radio and Army Radio said preliminary findings showed that an Israeli soldier fired at Hook in the midst of the gun battle with Palestinian gunmen when he mistook the 54-year-old U.N. official's cellular telephone to be a hand grenade. The army said the investigation was still under way and a spokeswoman denied any preliminary findings had been reached. The radio stations, citing unnamed sources, said Hook was shot as he walked down an alley that had been used by Palestinian gunmen earlier in the battle. They gave no further details. The UNRWA spokesman, Paul McCann, said UNRWA had no information on any initial findings and was launching its own probe into the incident. An investigator from U.N. headquarters in New York was due to arrive Sunday, he said. "He had been making requests with the Israelis to call a cease-fire to allow our staff and some vulnerable civilians living nearby to be evacuated from the area," McCann said. Israel and the United Nations said Friday it was unclear who fired the shots that killed Hook during an Israeli raid to search for an Islamic Jihad militant accused of masterminding a suicide bombing in October that killed 14 people. But the United Nations has officially accused Israeli forces of delaying an ambulance summoned to evacuate Hook. The army said a military ambulance was sent to the Briton's aid but that when it arrived he was already dead. Hook was overseeing the reconstruction of houses in the camp which had been bulldozed during a previous Israeli raid on the camp. |
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