Last update - 00:00 29/11/2007
Soldier critically wounded while performing maintenace on tank
By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was critically injured Wednesday night while performing routine maintenance on a tank at the Shizafon Armored Corps Base in the Arava Desert.
The soldier was evacuated by helicopter to the intensive care unit of Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva where he is listed in critical condition.
The tank reportedly was not in motion at the time of the accident, and a preliminary IDF investigation is probing whether the soldier was hurt while performing a routine check on the tank's weapons system.
This is the third accident this month involving on-duty IDF soldiers: Sergeant-Major Asaf Waxman was killed when he was crushed to death while driving an armored personnel carrier and Staff Sergeant Yariv Amitai was killed in a jeep accident while patrolling the border with the Gaza Strip.
A military police probe has found that Waxman had received no training on driving such a vehicle, nor did four other soldiers who were lightly to moderately injured when the APC overturned.
"Mom, I don't know how I'm going to drive that thing," Waxman, 28, told his mother the night before he started a training exercise on an APC in the Golan.
Waxman, of Rishon Letzion, was asked to drive the APC down a steep slope near the Gamla junction. He was heard shouting "I have no brakes," just before the APC turned over, crushing him to death.
Waxman hadn't driven an armored vehicle for nine years, one of his friends told Haaretz.
The military police has been probing the accident for almost three weeks.
Lacking training
"I didn't even know how to start up an APC," one soldier testified in a statement that reached Haaretz. "They told me, the whole exercise depends on you, even though I didn't know how to drive an APC at all."
The "refresher" course lasted all of 20 minutes. "We drove for a quarter of an hour on a straight surface in a parking lot, where they taught us to make right and left turns. Then we practiced driving on mountainous terrain for a few minutes and that was it," a reserve soldier said.
"Even a whole day of that wouldn't have done any good. The next day they asked me to drive one APC after another one. It was stressful. The other soldiers with me were also stressed out because of it," he said.
The soldier in the first APC had some experience driving smaller vehicles on rough terrain.
"When we reached a dangerous slope he told me on the wireless to go into first gear. If he hadn't told me I would have ended up like Waxman," he said.
The commanders insisted on continuing the exercise after the accident, but shortened it by one day.
"After the accident I was even more afraid of driving the APC. When I'd reach dangerous curves or slopes I'd stop the vehicle, get off with all the other soldiers and let a more experienced soldier drive it.
"That was an exercise. If it had been war with fire around us we'd have been killed."
Military sources said the MP were investigating, among other things, the possibility that the accident was caused because the APC crew did not stick to regulations.
"I've heard that one of the APC doors wasn't working properly and he was thrown out of the vehicle," one of Waxman's friends said.
Related articles: