Two Israeli soldiers using a traffic app to find their way mistakenly entered a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank overnight, sparking clashes that killed one Palestinian and wounded 15 people, officials said Tuesday. The two soldiers travelling in a jeep entered the Qalandia refugee camp and were targeted with rocks and Molotov cocktails, Israeli officials said.
Israeli reinforcements were then urgently deployed to the camp between Jerusalem and Ramallah to rescue them, provoking further clashes that lasted hours. The two soldiers were later rescued unharmed. Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the soldiers "apparently used Waze," the Israeli-developed navigation app now owned by Google. The military said it was investigating.
Waze however said the soldiers themselves were at fault, with a setting that tells the app to avoid "dangerous areas" having been turned off and the driver having deviated from the suggested route. With the threat of two of their soldiers being kidnapped or killed, Israeli forces were quickly dispatched. According to an Israeli police spokeswoman, Palestinians threw home-made explosives and shot at the rescue team, which also opened fire.
The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed and 10 wounded. The dead man was identified as Eyad Omar Sajdia, a 22-year-old student. Five Israeli border police were also wounded, one of them seriously, police said. A trail of blood could be seen extending down a wall from a roof where Sajdia was believed to have been when he was shot. The narrow roads of the camp were littered with rocks and other debris, and several thousand people later attended Sajdia's funeral, his body wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The two soldiers who first entered the camp abandoned their jeep, with one hiding in the courtyard of a house and shooting to defend himself and signal his position, the military spokesman said.
The other fled towards the nearby Israeli settlement of Kochav Yaakov. Their jeep was burnt, and what was said to be its registration plate could be seen on the ground in the camp on Tuesday. Sajdia's father, Omar, said a huge contingent of Israeli forces arrived at the camp. "If you want to describe the situation you would say there is a war," he told AFP as he received guests who paid their respects at his home.
Residents said the Israeli reinforcements included a bulldozer that caused damage to homes. The soldiers' mishap made headlines in Israel, whose military is reputed to be the region's most technologically advanced. "They apparently used Waze, which indicated a shortcut from Jerusalem to Ramallah," Yaalon said at a conference, according to his office.