Videotape Supports Claims Israel Targeted U.N. Base

An amateur videotape aired Monday has reinforced claims that Israeli artillery deliberately struck a U.N. base in Lebanon last month, killing about 100 refugees.

Israeli officials had maintained that the base was mistakenly hit by one or two stray rounds. Maj. Gen. Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, conceded Sunday that it could have been hit by as many as five shells.

A preliminary report by U.N. investigators says the remains of 15 shells were found at the base near the village of Qana in southern Lebanon.

The videotape, taken by a U.N. peacekeeper a mile away, shows a series of puffs of smoke emerging from the base, indicating when shells hit.

“The importance of the tape is that it shows the shelling is not one or two rounds that overshot, as we’ve been told for the past two weeks . . . but that it was a targeted shelling,” Timur Goksel, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, said Monday.

Goksel did not speculate on why the base might have been targeted.

“It’s up to the Israeli side to explain, I think,” he told Britain’s Sky Television.

Israel insisted that the shelling of the base was an accident and sent a top army officer to the United Nations in New York to explain. Brig. Gen. Dan Harel brought aerial photographs and technical data, including logs of the two batteries that fired the shells, in an attempt to convince the world body that the attack was an accident.

The rounds fell short because of mistakes in calculating the range and weight of the projectiles, Israeli officials said.

Even if the Israelis had seen Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas seeking shelter in the camp, “we wouldn’t shoot at it,” Harel told reporters in New York on Monday. “This is a U.N. camp, and we put parameters of safety around each and every U.N. compound in south Lebanon when the operation was going on.”

“We made a mistake and we are terribly sorry,” Prime Minister Shimon Peres said at a campaign stop Monday. “We regret it. . . . But, in my opinion, everything was done according to clear logic and in a responsible way. I am at peace with it.”

The attack on the United Nations camp occurred April 18, midway through Israel’s 16-day campaign to stop the Lebanese guerrillas from firing rockets on northern Israel. The offensive ended with a U.S.-brokered truce.

The British Broadcasting Corp., which aired the amateur video, said the U.N. investigation revealed that Hezbollah guerrillas were allowed to take shelter at the base shortly after firing on Israeli positions.

The videotape also shows an Israeli reconnaissance drone, or remote-piloted aircraft, flying near the base during the shelling, contradicting Israel’s initial assertion that there was no aircraft in the area.

Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi said Israeli gunners had different coordinates than the officers who approved the attack. He said the drone was on a different mission at the time of the shelling and could not see the civilians because they were indoors.

Thousands of Lebanese, meanwhile, marked a 1918 revolt against Ottoman rule by traveling Monday to the mass grave in Qana where victims of the attack on the U.N. base are buried.