With modern mapping, laser rangefinders and unmanned surveillance drones, the first shells should land close to the target, and the next salvo should be spot on. When “adjusting fire” artillery usually fires one round at a time, not five. Even if the Israelis were aiming at a rocket battery 500 metres away, they should not have hit the UN position and its presence should have been a major deterrent.Instead, they hit the Fijian UN headquarters, right in the middle of the position.. An Easter tour by elderly Greek pilgrims ended in tragedy yesterday when gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar”, or “God is Great”, opened fire at their hotel near the Pyramids.

Seventeen of the holidaymakers were killed and 16 wounded, including at least three who were hospitalised in intensive care units. Five Israeli shells which landed near the headquarters of the UN base were believed to be 155mm rounds fired from American M-109 self-propelled howitzers. Although the air force and technical troops are highly professional, many of the Israeli ground troops are conscripts.The Polish commander of the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), Major General Stanislaw Wozniak, said: “We were not aware that there was a Hizbollah position about 300 metres away.” Israel has told the UN its troops have strict orders to avoid inflicting any casualties on Unifil, which has about 5,000 stationed troops in southern Lebanon. Western military experts are doubtful about the Israelis’ attempted use of air power and artillery to neutralise the rocket launchers.”Without putting troops on the ground it’s a waste of time,” one expert said yesterday.

“They’re just alienating the rest of the population and acting as a recruiting drive for Hizbollah.”The Israeli armed forces have a technological edge over all their potential adversaries in the region, but there are weaknesses. A modern artillery force uses radar to plot the trajectories of incoming artillery and mortar rounds and can pinpoint the firing position within a minute or so. Rockets are harder to track, and the so-called “Katyusha” (“Little Kate”) rockets fired by Hizbollah forces from southern Lebanon have often been fired not from multiple mountings on lorries but from individual launching rails which can then be abandoned. The attacks on Lebanese villages by Israeli aircraft have caused numerous civilian casualties, but failed in their stated aim of silencing the multiple rocket launchers which have been firing at northern Israel.The reasons are simple. If so, the error was very serious.Since Israel launched “Grapes of Wrath” a week ago, its vaunted military reputation has been severely challenged. The Fijian battalion, whose headquarters was set on fire, had been in the base for a long time. After nearly a week of continuous action it is possible that tiredness and elation among the Israeli troops caused an error.

Intelligence sources said they could not believe the attack was deliberately targeted against a known UN position which would have been clearly marked on Israeli maps and that it must have been a “cock-up”.
There were reports of a Hizbollah multiple rocket launcher battery 300 metres away, but the Israeli forces should have been very careful if that was the target, given the close proximity of a known UN base. If the Israelis did not intend to launch a heavy artillery strike on a known United Nations base where refugees were sheltering, the only other explanation for the attack at Qana yesterday is military incompetence on a previously unthinkable scale. All they knew was when the first rounds came crashing down upon the 600 men, women and children in their buildings.. Only a day earlier, however, UN Irish troops had to retreat from the village of Bradchit after the Israelis had been informed that they were taking humanitarian supplies into the village.Yesterday, Fijian soldiers told me they received no Israeli warnings of incoming shellfire. But the Israelis not only knew UN buildings were there and that they housed refugees; they could communicate via UN operations with the Fijians.All morning I had heard UN posts across southern Lebanon receiving Israeli warnings of imminent air attacks in their area. When we arrived, I found a set of bloody footprints at the gate and then a stream of blood running from a gutted building.So what, we were left asking, was the justification for such a bloodbath? The Katyusha rockets – six of them – had most assuredly been fired from close to the UN compound at Qana, two minutes before the murderous burst of incoming shells. Exactly two minutes later, the Irish UN troops at Tibnin radioed that their battalion area was under Israeli fire.Driving at speed over the broken roads to Qana, the shelling lost its power to frighten.

We could hear the bangs and thumps outside the vehicle, far away now, but the moment we approached Qana, we could see the dense clouds of white smoke rising from the embers of the Fijian headquarters. “Help is on its way, help is on its way, help is on its way.” We could hear the UN’s medevac emergency teams being ordered to Qana along with 70 UN personnel carriers and every available ambulance. “Air medevac is under way,” a voice said, presumably at UN operations. “We have casualties, we have casualties, at least six dead.” Commandant Smyth looked at me and said nothing. We both knew that there were 600 refugees in the Fijian battalion headquarters and that they must be dying in their dozens. They were.By the time I had passed Tyre to turn east towards Qana, the UN operations room announced the Israelis had ordered a halt to all shelling across the UN zone to allow aid to reach Qana It was untrue. A Lebanese UN liaison man came on the line from the burning Qana UN headquarters “People are dying here We need help.”Naqqoura came back on the air.