Mark Dodd
December 27, 2006

THE Israeli army has admitted its soldiers may have fired on a Red Cross ambulance during the war in Lebanon - an incident Foreign Minister Alexander Downer claimed was a hoax that had duped a gullible Australian and international media.
The claims centred on a controversial July 23 attack in southern Lebanon in which two Red Cross ambulances were destroyed, either by artillery or missiles - injuring at least six Lebanese, including one man whose leg was later amputated.
Initial media reports claimed the Israeli Defence Force targeted the vehicles, firing a missile directly through the roof of one ambulance using the international Red Cross symbol as a target marker.

Others blamed Israeli artillery or armed unmanned drones.

An Israeli army spokesman has now gone closer than ever before to admitting responsibility.

“We (IDF) certainly do not target ambulances but in a combat zone, we cannot always co-ordinate their safety,” Captain Benjamin Rutland said. “It (the ambulance) could have been struck by our mortar or artillery.

Read more at the Australian