1 Israeli Killed, 2nd Injured by ‘Friendly Fire’

JERUSALEM —  An Israeli soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in southern Lebanon on Tuesday when members of their own unit apparently mistook them for Lebanese guerrillas and opened fire.

The shooting, which an Israeli army spokesman said was the first fatal “friendly fire” incident involving Israeli troops in more than a year, underscored the tense situation in Israel’s self-delared security zone across the Lebanese border.

“These soldiers are on alert and very tense, and the fact that five people have been killed [trying to infiltrate the Israeli border] in the last few days makes them even more nervous,” said Zeev Schiff, who covers military affairs for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everyone is with his finger on the trigger.”

Israeli troops and their Lebanese militia allies often come under attack in southern Lebanon by guerrillas belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah group and several radical Palestinian organizations. A member of the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli-backed militia, was killed Monday by a bomb detonated near his car in the Israeli-occupied security zone.

But Tuesday’s fatality came at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Staff Sgt. Valery Ganzman, 22, was killed and a second soldier seriously hurt when their unit, which was returning to its base after an overnight patrol, accidentally split into two groups, the army spokesman said.

Maj. Gen. Amiram Levine, the army’s northern commander, said the two squads briefly lost contact with each other. In the confusion, the commander of one group, believing his men were about to be attacked, ordered them to open fire on the other, he said.

“I cannot say what was the reason for the detachment and what transpired in the minutes between its occurrence and the opening of fire,” Levine said. “How it occurred and how they did not understand . . . that part of the force had fallen behind will be clarified in the investigation.”

Ganzman was the 18th Israeli soldier killed in southern Lebanon this year but the first to die in an accident. The injured soldier, whose name was not released, was expected to survive, Israel Radio reported.

The fatality came one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the security zone and warned that any escalation in Lebanon would bring “painful retaliation” against Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, Israel carried out a successful test Tuesday of an Arrow 2 antimissile missile, one day after the Israeli media carried reports that Syria has recently conducted tests of long-range Scud missiles capable of hitting targets throughout Israel.