Jordanian Soldier Kills 7 Israeli Students Chases Terrified Girls On School Field Trip To ‘Island Of Peace’

A Jordanian soldier unleashed a volley of automatic rifle fire on a busload of Israeli schoolgirls who were taking a field trip to the scenic “Island of Peace” border post Thursday, killing seven of the junior high students and wounding six.

Witnesses said 40 to 50 eighthgraders had gotten off of their bus and were surveying the sun-washed view over the River Jordan when the gunman grabbed a fellow soldier’s weapon and began firing at the students’ backs from a guard 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.”

“At first I thought it was some kind of joke,” 13-year-old Natalie Boliti said in an interview Thursday night. “But then I saw him shooting … One friend of mine was shot in the neck and another in the foot. I began to scream and dropped to the ground.”

The brutal attack on 12-year-old and 13-year-old Israelis stunned the region, despite recent warnings from political leaders that the crumbling of the Mideast peace process could lead to bloodshed.

Jordanian soldiers at the scene called the shooter “a madman” and spoke of his rampage as an “accident.” But several Israeli leaders directly and indirectly tied the attack to Jordanian King Hussein’s recent criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Israeli leader’s policies toward Palestinians.

“Verbal violence unfortunately can lead to physical violence,” Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai said after reviewing the scene with Jordan’s Prince Hassan.

Earlier this week, King Hussein sent a personal and harshly worded letter to Netanyahu accusing him of “continued deliberate humiliation of your so-called Palestinian partners” in proposing to build a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem and to carry out a smaller troop withdrawal from the occupied West Bank than Palestinians anticipated. He warned Netanyahu that his actions were leading Israelis and Arabs “toward an abyss of bloodshed and disaster, brought about by fear and despair.”

In Jerusalem, Foreign Minister David Levy seethed at “this bloody harvest” of schoolchildren and said that attempts to dismiss the gunman as a madman were unacceptable. He warned Jordan and the Palestinians to lower their rhetoric against Israel.

Following the attack, the Jordanian king cut short a trip to Spain and flew home. Visibly shaken, the king said, “When I warned a few days ago of the danger of the possibility of violence, I never thought it would lead to this.”

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and Hussein has been Israel’s closest Arab ally since then. But Palestinians make up about 70 percent of Jordan’s population, and among them a majority view the peace process with skepticism or outright hostility.

Israelis observing the tragedy focused on reports that Jordanian soldiers were slow to overpower the gunman, and that they kept Israeli rescue teams waiting at the border for 40 minutes before allowing them access to the wounded.

Jordanians interviewed on the streets of their capital, Amman, condemned attacks on civilians and particularly on children, but blamed Netanyahu for raising tensions in the region to such a degree that something like this could happen.

The attack took place on a verdant hill overlooking the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers southeast of the Sea of Galilee, in an area that Israel returned to Jordan in 1994 as part of their bilateral peace agreement.

The land is leased to Israelis for agriculture and the “Island of Peace” is a popular tourist spot with Israelis because it provides a sweeping view and offers a chance to set foot in Jordan.

Jordanian and Israeli officials said the gunman was a noncombatant draftee with an administrative job in the army who did not have his own weapon. He was variously identified by unnamed military sources in Jordan as Ahmed Moussa or Ahmed Yousef Mustafa, a resident of the town of Adasiya, a few miles northeast of the shooting site.

He is not believed to be a Palestinian.

“We were on the border with Jordan and the soldiers started to shoot at us,” said Hila Ivri, a student who received a gunshot wound in the leg and was hospitalized, along with her twin sister. “Everyone fell to the ground in the bushes. I saw all of my girlfriends covered with blood and everyone was crying and shouting …”

In Washington, President Clinton condemned the shooting but cautioned the Israeli government against overreacting to the attack, which he said “may have been just (the act of) a deranged person.” The White House said Clinton later talked by telephone with Netanyahu to express his condolences.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat put aside his anger with Netanyahu and also telephoned the Israeli prime minister to convey his sympathies.