ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 14, 1997 TAG: 9703140053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BAQURA, JORDAN
SOURCE: BARTON GELLMAN THE WASHINGTON POST
The eighth-grade girls, ages 12 and 13, were chattering and snapping photographs when the Jordanian soldier aimed the weapon at their backs and started firing.
A Jordanian military driver seized a comrade's M-16 rifle Thursday and opened fire at a group of Israeli schoolgirls touring this scenic border outpost, killing seven and wounding six before being overpowered by fellow soldiers.
Survivors and witnesses described a spring idyll turned into a massacre amid the mustard blossoms and poppies of a hilltop site that Israelis call the ``island of peace.'' The eighth-grade girls, ages 12 and 13, were chattering and snapping photographs when the Jordanian soldier aimed the weapon at their backs from an adjacent military observation tower.
Amid shouts of ``madman'' from his fellow soldiers, the gunman descended, firing, from the tower. He chased the screaming children down the hill, squeezing bursts of automatic fire as he ran. Raz Hess, a 23-year-old Israeli witness, said the gunman switched to single shots as he closed and used the last of his ammunition ``shooting from a meter away at the heads of the closest girls.''
The gunman was identified as Ahmed Mousa or Ahmed Yousef Mustafa. Little was known of his motives or affiliations, but a woman identified as his mother told reporters in Jordan that her son is mentally ill. Public commentary in both countries nevertheless linked the slaughter to a thickening atmosphere of crisis between Israel and its Arab negotiating partners.
In an anguished letter sent Sunday and made public Tuesday night, Jordan's King Hussein warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his ``deliberate humiliation'' of Arabs and ``accumulating tragic actions'' were leading to ``an abyss of bloodshed and disaster, brought about by fear and despair.''
Some senior Israelis blamed the shooting on that letter and what they called a broader campaign of incitement. Foreign Minister David Levy, reacting to Jordan's official condolences and its early suggestion that the gunman was mentally disturbed, said ``there can be no absolution, no atonement.''
``The act itself is indeed madness, which is the result of what we had been warning against: the creation of an atmosphere in which remarks from various directions warned of nearing violence,'' he said. ``Jordan must examine itself.''
Hussein condemned the shooting as a ``vile crime'' and defended his credentials as peacemaker. Speaking in Madrid before he cut short a state visit to Spain and postponed a Washington summit with President Clinton, Hussein said he ``never thought it would break the way it did today'' when he spoke of violence, ``but I was fully within my responsibility to try to warn one and all that we had come too far.''
His brother, an ashen-faced Crown Prince Hassan, flew to the site in the green beret and uniform of a paratroop lieutenant general, telling Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai he was ``deeply shamed by what has happened here.''
``If there has been a harsh exchange of words over other issues, let's try for once to keep our humanity apart from the political,'' Hassan said. ``And if there has been a harsh exchange of words, it was probably intended to serve the interests to peace and to get back to working for peace rather than God forbid stimulating or inspiring such black acts.''
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose lieutenants also have been warning of violence, expressed his condolences in telephone calls to Netanyahu and President Ezer Weizman.
Further controversies swirled around the immediate Jordanian response at the scene, with Israeli witnesses saying other soldiers did not act fast enough to stop the rogue attack and that Jordanian border sentries refused for a critical 40 minutes to permit Israeli ambulances to enter.
``At the beginning, Jordanian soldiers didn't overpower him and didn't do anything,'' said Rosa Himi, a teacher at the Orthodox Jewish First school in Beit Shemesh, who escorted the 51 students on their outing. ``They even pushed one of our teachers and wouldn't let him near the injured girls to care for them. It was only when he failed to put his second (ammunition) clip in the gun that the other soldiers took him.''
Senior Israeli commanders, including West Bank police chief Alec Ron and the Central Command's Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, played down those complaints, emphasizing that the Jordanians gave medical treatment to the victims and evacuated seven of the most critically wounded - five of whom died - to a hospital in nearby Shuneh. Dayan said he telephoned a general in Amman and received permission for Israeli ambulances to cross the border, along with army troops to search for missing children in the bushes.
Hours after the 11:20 a.m. shooting, Israeli army rabbis arrived with gauze and gloves and plastic bags to perform the religious obligation of collecting every trace of human remains for burial. They clipped and bagged the bloody grass, kneeling grimly to blot stains from the asphalt.
The shooting site is a popular destination for Israeli field trips and is known in Hebrew as Naharayim, or Two Rivers, because of the local confluence of the Jordan and Yarmouk. Early Zionist pioneers built an electrical generator here. Arabs and Jews operated it together until the Jewish state was declared in 1948, accounting for the large color sign declaring, ``Naharayim: Island of Peace.''
Israel returned the site to Jordanian sovereignty as part of their 1994 peace treaty, but Jordan recognizes the property rights of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov and granted a renewable 25-year lease. Though Israelis may enter freely, with a minimum of paperwork, the treaty forbids them ``to carry weapons of any kind in the area.''
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Two survivors of the Jordanianby CNBshooting comfort each other Thursday after returning to their
Orthodox Jewish school in Beit Shemesh. Seven of 51 students died
and six were injured. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY