Israeli Officer Killed in ‘Friendly Fire’ : Defense: Sergeant had sped through checkpoints, highlighting lack of discipline among security forces.

An Israeli police sergeant was killed and two soldiers were critically wounded when troops patrolling the occupied West Bank opened fire on them after they sped through two army checkpoints, a military spokesman reported Saturday.

The latest “friendly fire” incident reflected the heightened tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israeli troops in both regions--and a recurrent lack of discipline among Israeli security forces.

Police Staff Sgt. Eitan Masika was shot dead late Friday, according to the military spokesman, after he drove through two army roadblocks on the Trans-Samarian Highway south of Nablus, not even slowing despite orders to halt.

Taking the group for terrorists heading toward the large Israeli settlement of Ariel nearby or perhaps into central Israel itself, troops at the second checkpoint shot out his car’s tires as it raced on, the army spokesman said.

A soldier, one of three who had hitched a ride with Masika near the remote West Bank settlement of Maale Ephraim, then got out of the car and, wanting to signal that they were Israelis, fired a single shot in the air.

The jittery Israeli troops, believing that terrorists in the car had opened fire on them, responded with a fusillade that killed Masika and wounded two of the soldiers. The firing stopped only after the uninjured soldier, shouting in Hebrew, finally made himself heard.

The regional military commander, who under Israeli censorship regulations may be identified only as “Colonel K,” defended his troops’ action as fully justified and within operational orders, which permit them to fire without warning on anyone seen to be armed or believed to be an immediate threat.

But the colonel was at a loss to explain why Masika had not stopped, why they had not identified themselves in Hebrew and why the soldier had fired even a single shot. The three soldiers, moreover, had left their West Bank base without permission for a weekend in Tel Aviv, the army spokesman said.

Masika’s actions were harshly criticized by Ephraim Sneh, a member of Parliament from the governing Labor Party and a retired general, as “irresponsible, almost reckless behavior” indicating to the patrolling troops that the car was “a hostile vehicle.”

As Israeli casualties increase, discipline among Israeli security forces, notoriously lax except in elite units, is being questioned.

Two policemen were murdered before dawn Tuesday as they slept in their patrol car outside Hadera in northern Israel. A member of the Border Police who was shot dead last Saturday in Tulkarm in the West Bank might have survived if he had worn his protective vest of body armor as required. And a confidential study of recent casualties among Israeli forces in the occupied territories showed that most resulted from a failure to obey standing orders.

Israeli troops and their allies in the local South Lebanon Army, meanwhile, clashed Saturday with Iranian-backed guerrillas in another day of skirmishes and artillery duels in south Lebanon.

Two members of the Shiite Muslim militia, Hezbollah, were killed, according to an Associated Press correspondent in the region, along with one soldier from the South Lebanon Army, the Israeli-sponsored force in the area. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in the fighting, a military spokesman said here.