The Israeli army is searching for nine deserters, some of them armed, in the wake of last week's rampage by a disgruntled soldier who opened fire on a crowded bus and killed four Israeli Arabs, Israel's military chief said yesterday.
The gunman in Thursday's attack had fled the army to protest Israel's upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements. Authorities fear extremist Jews could carry out similar attacks in a bid to thwart the withdrawal, set to begin next week.
"There are deserters with guns and this concerns us," Halutz told Army Radio.
He said, however, that the nine missing soldiers had left the army for various reasons, and that he did not consider them dangerous.
"I don't want to blow this out of proportion," he said.
The withdrawal will uproot 9,000 Jewish settlers from their homes. Many settlers have said they will resist the evacuation order, and the army fears some could resort to violence.
"What concerns me the most is the possibility that, God forbid, someone being evacuated or carrying out the evacuation will be harmed," Halutz said.
Halutz, a former air force commander, said he expects attacks by Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip to drop after the withdrawal, but he couldn't say if they would disappear altogether. Many Palestinian attacks have been directed at Jewish settlements, but militants also frequently fire rockets and mortar shells at towns inside Israel.
Israeli hardliners accuse Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of caving in to Palestinian violence and believe the withdrawal will encourage further attacks. Sharon says the continued presence in Gaza, where 8,500 settlers live amid 1.3 million Palestinians, is untenable and the withdrawal will reduce friction between the sides.
Some religious leaders have encouraged Israeli soldiers not to carry out the withdrawal. In the latest such call, two former chief rabbis published a letter yesterday saying that dismantling Gaza's synagogues would "defile the sanctity" of the houses of worship.
Halutz said he found such comments "bothersome."
He said about 100 soldiers have said they won't carry out their orders.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS