Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Yael Reconnaissance Troup
Place of incident: Palestinian check point in the West Bank near Rama
Description:

February 2002

There was an attack on 6 people here at ‘443’ (designation of our position, or our-held hilltop), 6 soldiers from the Corps of Engineers. Some terrorist arrived at a (our) checkpoint and killed 6. That evening we were rushed off to a room. Suddenly our squad commander came from some two-minute long briefing saying ‘Listen….we are doing…our action is a revenge. We are going to kill 6 Palestinian policemen somewhere, revenging our six they took down’. There were about 4 positions beyond our ‘443’ under the control of Palestinian policemen, and we were sent to each of these positions to ‘liquidate’ the Palestinian policemen there.
Our briefing was also about 2 minutes long, defining our action as a revenge, while I was still deliberating, asking ‘what had they done?’ ‘who are they?’. The answer was: Palestinian policemen. On my question ‘what did they do?’ the answer was’ there was a suspicion that the terrorist who killed our 6 came through that (Palestinian) checkpoint. Suspicion, but no concrete evidence. But I was told: it doesn’t matter; they took six of ours, and we are going to take six of theirs.

That’s the expression used?

That’s the expression: ‘revenge’. Also a day later the press reported a ‘revenge action’. It was not hidden (from the public). The announcement clearly read ’revenge action’. It was a crazy ‘blood revenge’ rush. We had a long hike ahead of us to get there and we arrived on foot at around 4AM. There was no one there during the night and the check point was locked for the night. There was some sort of building where they slept, coming down during the day to the checkpoint and staying there.

And you hid in an ambush?

We waited for them in an ambush. The idea was simply to kill them all. Whenever they arrived, we would kill them, regardless whether (they were) armed or not. If they were Palestinian policemen, they were to be shot. The order was given and our six opened fire. The first firing was ineffective and missed. They (our, other shooters) were also supposed to hit the street lighting, but missed that too. We got up and fired, hitting two of theirs (the Palestinian policemen), killing the two. But they weren’t killed after all. Pardon me, they were injured: I think we hit one in the shoulder and one in the leg, or something like it, and they escaped. So we continued (shooting). I should add: I shot one in the head as he was running while another one was crawling behind. We got up and started chasing them. It was… really… I really enjoyed it. It was the first time (in my experience) that we were in an ‘advance….storm….’ situation, like in our training exercises. And we acted flawlessly. We performed superbly. And then he (one of the policemen?) ran and we continued to advance. He entered one of the corrugated sheet metal sheds and the four of us sprayed the shed with bullets. A gas cylinder there exploded and everything around caught fire..fire..fire….
Meanwhile we had a killed policeman, another one in this burning inferno, and a third one, escaping. We ran after him into a graveyard, or something like a graveyard, stood on the surrounding wall and shot at him. We killed him too ……

Were they armed?

Wait a minute. Meanwhile they didn’t shoot at us. Didn’t return fire.

Except when it all started?

No! The initial were ours.

Oh, OK.

We didn’t run into them and they never fired at us during any phase of the operation. Initially we opened fire from a distance, hitting nothing. Then we got up to storm the position, hitting one of theirs and he escaped. I hit him with another bullet. The second ran into the shed (that caught fire) while we chased the third to the graveyard. The fourth one escaped.

The guy in the cemetery was killed?

No (above he was quoted as saying yes, he was killed!). We stood on the wall, shot, and he fell. That was the end. Now the first one who fell lay on the ground and we saw only the lower part of his body. Some boulder hid him. There were three or four (of our guys) who kept shooting at the body, punching holes into it.

To ‘confirm kill’?

No. From the excitement of the battle they punched holes, punching him completely. At the retreat from the cemetery I went to check, to ‘confirm kill’ and also to take his rifle away. I reached him and he was smashed…. a completely smashed body. I turned the body around. It was a guy in his mid-fiftieths or sixtieths, very old. No arms. Later we understood, that, including the one at the cemetery, no one of them was armed.

Were they uniformed?

They wore the uniforms of Palestinian policemen but were unarmed. And we went and threw another grenade into this thing that was burning…

Israeli helicopters fly over the Gaza Strip for a second round of attacks after killing at least 180 people in their previous attack.

Military gunboats have also been approaching the coastal territory, witnesses told Press TV on Saturday.