2nd Settler Aided in Massacre, Soldiers Say : Israel: Two guards on duty say killer came with a different rifle. They also admit firing inside mosque.

Two Israeli soldiers, who were on guard duty at the mosque where a Jewish settler massacred about 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank last month, testified Thursday that the killer came with a rifle, but another settler carried the gun actually used in the shooting.

The testimony before a special Israeli commission investigating the massacre threw into serious doubt the Israeli army’s assertion that Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born physician from the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, had acted alone.

The Israeli Army’s investigation now appears to have been greatly rushed in concluding that the atrocity was, as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put it, “the work of a single lunatic, a mad man,” and not a crime planned and executed by several people, perhaps members of extremist Jewish groups.

The soldiers also acknowledged firing their own weapons inside the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, contradicting the army’s assertions that they had only shot in the air outside the shrine.

Palestinians have repeatedly asserted that Goldstein was joined by other Israelis, assumed from their uniforms to be soldiers, in shooting the rows of kneeling men at morning prayers in the Ibrahim Mosque. So far, however, Palestinian witnesses have refused to testify before the Israeli commission, believing it biased.

The Israeli panel had already heard last week that:

* Goldstein had left a still-unpublished “letter of confession,” indicating that it was a planned political attack.

* He had been driven to the shrine that morning by an unidentified man, suggesting an accomplice.

* The bag in which he carried more ammunition was found in a room where 13 Jewish settlers were praying at the time but, mysteriously, none saw him.

The testimony Thursday raised additional questions because it indicated, even more strongly, that Goldstein had at least one accomplice in the attack.

Previously, Israeli military authorities had insisted that Goldstein was armed with a Galil, an Israeli-made, full-sized assault rifle.

But Sgt. Kobi Yosef, one of the guards on duty, said Goldstein was carrying a standard, army-issue, U.S.-made M-16 rifle when he walked past him at 5:20 a.m. on Feb. 25. Five minutes later, Yosef continued, another man, also apparently a Jewish settler, entered the shrine with a Glilon, a compact Israeli-made rifle.

What was found next to Goldstein’s body, however, and what had been used in the massacre--Israeli military authorities now say--was the Glilon, a smaller cousin of the Galil, modeled on the Soviet AK-47 and unmistakably different from an M-16.

Yosef’s testimony, careful and unambiguous, stunned the five-member commission, which had been told by top Israeli generals as well as military investigators that all evidence showed Goldstein alone had fired upon the Muslim worshipers, firing 110 rounds from the Glilon and only from it. (The Galil and Glilon use the same ammunition.)

“Are you sure?” Chief Justice Meir Shamgar, the commission chairman, asked Yosef after nearly a minute of silence.

“Yes, as sure as I can be,” replied Yosef, who as a member of an Israeli tank battalion carries a Glilon himself. “I saw (Goldstein) from a meter away.”

Questioned closely about the man who had carried the Glilon, Yosef said he could not identify him. “I saw another settler, a Jew, at least, and I assume a settler, carrying a Glilon,” Yosef said. “I never saw him before, and I have not seen him since. I don’t know who he is.

“The Jews (who pray at the shrine), I know them all because I have been in the same place for four months, every morning at the same time,” he added. “I know them all--they’re regulars. I did not recognize that specific Jew.”

Goldstein himself was beaten to death by worshipers inside the mosque after he had apparently fired more than three magazines at the 500 men and boys.

Sgt. Niv Drori, who was on duty with Yosef, testified that he too had seen Goldstein come with an M-16 and that another man came later with the Glilon. A third guard, Cpl. Erez Elimelech, also said Goldstein carried an M-16 when he entered.

Their platoon commander, 2nd Lt. Rotem Ravivi, testified that when he saw Goldstein a few minutes later, he was armed with the Glilon, not an M-16. The implication was that Goldstein and the unidentified settler had switched weapons inside the Cave of the Patriarchs.

“I saw him enter the place (where Jews were praying) carrying a Glilon,” Ravivi said. “I saw no on else with a Glilon on that day.”

Ravivi said he had spoken briefly with Goldstein, who was in uniform as an army reservist, asking whether he was on duty and being told yes. “I asked him how he was,” Ravivi recounted. “The fact that he was in uniform caught my eye. I asked him if he was doing reserve service and he answered ‘yes’ and kept walking.”

Ravivi said he had come to know Goldstein as an “OK guy” during the four months his tank unit had been on guard duty at the shrine.

“I knew he was an officer, I knew he was a doctor,” Ravivi said, explaining why he was not suspicious of Goldstein despite his membership in Kach, a now-banned ultranationalist group. “He had a two-way radio and a weapon from the army. I had talked with him quite a few times, and he seemed quite reasonable. All that gave me nothing to suspect.”

Yosef and Drori also told the commission that they had both fired inside the shrine when they heard the shooting and believed it to be an Arab attack on Jews. But they insisted that their shots, even those chest-high, did not hit any of the fleeing worshipers.

A Palestinian panel, appointed by the Palestine Liberation Organization to investigate the massacre independently, said earlier this week that its witnesses indicated that at least one man was killed and several more were wounded by army gunfire as they tried to escape.

Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, the top army commander in the West Bank, had told the commission that the soldiers fired only into the air and that no Palestinians were wounded or killed by army gunfire near the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Yosef said he and Drori at first believed that an Arab terrorist was shooting in the shrine and they had fired to prevent his escape. “We wanted to create a jam at the door,” Yosef said. “We were afraid the shooter, if he was an Arab, would come outside . . . and would also hurt us.”

Yosef said they stopped firing when a wounded man, a Palestinian, staggered out. “He was full of blood. We understood that a Jew was firing inside, not an Arab,” he said.

They then locked the main gate, forcing worshipers to take a longer route to another exit to evacuate the wounded. “We made their way longer, but we also made our lives longer,” Yosef said. “They would have trampled us to death. One little boy, who was wounded in the leg, fell and was trampled to death.”

Meantime, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in a gunfight, the army reported. A Palestinian gunman reportedly fired from his car at a passing Israeli patrol on the coastal road in Khan Yunis, according to military authorities, and the soldiers shot back, killing him and an Arab passenger.

Protests also erupted at two West Bank universities, Birzeit and Bethlehem, where tension has been high ever since the massacre, with soldiers firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse students, according to news reports.

At Birzeit, a traditional hotbed of protest, about 1,000 demonstrating students burned tires, barricaded roads and stoned an army outpost to protest the killings in Khan Yunis.

University officials said 10 students were injured by rubber bullets, none seriously. Troops also fired tear gas and briefly surrounded the campus. The two sides reached a truce and the students dispersed.

The Smoking Gun?

Israeli military authorities had insisted gunman Baruch Goldstein was armed with a Galil, an Israeli-made, full-sized assault rifle.

But two Israeli soldiers testified Thursday that the killer came with an M-16. However, a Galil, was found next to the body, military officials now say.

Source: Times staff reports