Broadcasting Authority Director-General Mordechai Shklar and journalist Ran Adelist denied yesterday that the Channel 1 documentary about the Shaked commando unit alleges that Egyptian prisoners of war were murdered.

Shklar said in a statement that reports about the documentary in the Israeli press - including in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv - had relied on the Egyptian media.

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He said that such publications had not bothered to watch the documentary before reporting about it. "The film depicts the events of the end of the Six-Day War, when the commando unit was ordered to hunt down the Egyptian commando unit in the Gaza Strip en route to Sinai," Shklar writes.

He notes that the narrator says that "throughout the pursuit, which lasted several days, 250 Egyptian casualties were counted," and that veterans of the commando unit were still "undecided" about the necessity of the operation. "Nowhere does the documentary claim the Egyptians were prisoners of war, the only question is whether they posed a threat," he writes.

Adelist accused the Israeli media of acting with "typical indolence" in quoting the Egyptian media without verifying the validity of the claims.