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| Sunday, 1 December 2002 |
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Annan wants Israeli troops punished in UN killing By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Escalating a confrontation with Israel, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants the government to identify and punish its soldiers responsible for last week's shooting death of British U.N. relief worker Iain Hook, a U.N. spokesman said on Friday. The Israeli army, in an initial report on the incident which unrolled last Friday in the Palestinian West Bank city of Jenin, said its troops shot Hook by mistake as they returned fire aimed at them from Palestinian gunmen inside the compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). U.N. officials say there were no gunmen inside the UNRWA compound. They say Hook bled to death after he was shot by Israeli forces, who then blocked an ambulance from gaining access to the site. Annan wrote Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday conveying his "sense of outrage" at the killing of Hook, the U.N. spokesman said. Annan told Sharon he "expected Israel to carry out a rigorous investigation of the incident, share its results with the United Nations and hold accountable those responsible for Mr Hook's death," the spokesman said. UNRWA was formed in 1949 to help the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Hook, 54, had been heading a team to rehabilitate the Jenin refugee camp, badly damaged during an Israeli offensive in April. MOBILE PHONE MISTAKEN FOR A GUN UNRWA, in a statement issued in Jerusalem, said Hook and his staff had been trapped in the UNRWA office compound in Jenin for several hours before he was shot, pinned down after Israeli forces entered the city on Friday morning in search of an Islamic Jihad militant accused of being behind a suicide bombing in October which killed 14 people. A preliminary Israeli army probe said its troops shot Hook when they mistook an object he was holding for a weapon as they fought a gunbattle with Palestinians firing from within and around the UNRWA compound. Israeli radio later said the object in Hook's hand had been his mobile phone. The army expressed regret for the killing and denied it had delayed an ambulance. After the United Nations announced it conducted its own probe and concluded there had been no Palestinian gunmen in the UNRWA compound at the time, Israeli authorities gave Reuters a recording of a voicemail message they said Hook had left on the phone of an Israeli liaison official 18 minutes before he was killed. In the message, Hook said he was trying to keep Palestinians out of the UNRWA compound. But the U.N. spokesman reiterated that the world body's own investigation "has not found any evidence to substantiate the contention that the UNRWA office compound where Mr. Hook died was the source of gunfire directed at the Israeli Defense Forces." |
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