An Israeli army inquiry into an ambush in which three soldiers were killed has resulted in the dismissal of the commander of the Jordan Valley Brigade.
Col. Avi Burger was relieved of his duties after the investigation of the June 26 ambush on Israeli forces showed a series of mistakes.
Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak, the Israel Defense Force chief of staff, announced the dismissal.
“It was a terrible failure: of planning, execution and control,” Shahak said.
Other IDF sources were quoted as saying that the entire chain of command failed in connection with the attack, which also resulted in the wounding of two Israeli soldiers.
According to the report, after the gunmen fired on an Israeli patrol, they overtook the command car, using its machine gun to fire on a second patrol that arrived at the site about an hour later.
While Israeli forces had reported hearing shots to their south, it was not until 45 minutes later that the company commander decided to send a second patrol to see what had happened to the first, the report said.
That afternoon, it was determined that the gunmen had crossed from Jordan into Israel and back into Jordan.
A pro-Syrian Palestinian group, Fatah-Uprising, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Last week, Israeli jets rocketed an ammunition depot in eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border belonging to Fatah-Uprising.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
