Military sources here dismissed as “pure speculation” a report in The Sunday Times of London that claimed five Israeli soldiers killed in an army base accident last November had been training to assassinate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The author of the article, Marie Colvin, wrote that earlier reports saying the men were training for the assassination of a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon were “elaborate disinformation.”
Instead, Colvin wrote, the soldiers who died in the accident had actually been rehearsing the assassination of Hussein, using what one source told her was a highly sophisticated “body heat-seeking missile.”
As a result of the accident, the assassination plot was canceled, since it was planned for a specific time and place, she reported.
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.
