World in brief: Defense minister resigns over war

Israel’s defense minister said Saturday he will step down after an inquiry commission criticized his handling of the war in Lebanon last summer, but he will probably wait until his Labor Party has held its primaries at the end of the month.

The government probe found that Amir Peretz did not fulfill his duty as defense minister, in part because of his inexperience in military matters.

About 100,000 people from across the political spectrum demonstrated Thursday in Tel Aviv to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Peretz to resign.

Olmert has said he will not resign, but analysts said it was only a matter of time before he is forced out of office. Three members of his Kadima Party, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, called on him to resign this week.

Rome

Oxygen mix-up tied to hospital deaths

A 73-year-old woman died in an Italian hospital because tubes carrying oxygen and anesthesia were switched, and authorities were investigating whether the error was responsible for as many as seven other recent deaths, officials said Saturday.

Some 21 people have been treated in the Castellaneta hospital’s coronary intensive care unit since it opened on April 20. Eight of them died.

Hospital officials first discovered a problem there Friday, after the woman, who was being treated for a relatively minor heart arrhythmia, was given what doctors thought was oxygen to help her breathe. But “her ability to breathe, rather than improving, worsened,” Dr. Cosimo Turi, health director of the hospital in Taranto, southern Italy, told Sky TG24.

“The only plausible explanation we can provide … is that there could have been a switch in the derivation of the pipes … so that rather than being connected to oxygen, they were connected to nitrogen protoxide,” he said.

The head of the local health department, Marco Urago, said the presence of the anesthesia in the oxygen tubes was “caused by an erroneous connection” of the pipes during construction.