Two Israeli soldiers said to be using a traffic app entered a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank overnight, provoking clashes that killed one Palestinian and wounded 15 people, officials said Tuesday.
Palestinian health officials say a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed and 15 others were wounded in clashes that broke out amid the raid.
The two soldiers travelling in a jeep entered the Qalandiya refugee camp and were targeted with rocks and Molotov cocktails, Israeli officials said.
They fled after their jeep caught fire, with one escaping to a nearby Jewish settlement and the other taking cover in the yard of a Palestinian family for about an hour before he was rescued by the Israeli troops amid heavy clashes. The military said it went into emergency mode because of concerns that one of the soldiers had been abducted.
The Palestinian Red Crescent identified the killed Palestinian man as university student Eyad Sajadiyeh, saying he was shot in the head during the fighting. The Israeli military said ten security personnel were wounded.
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said the soldiers appeared to go astray by following Waze, the Israeli-developed global traffic app, which showed them the shortest route from Jerusalem to their destination in the West Bank. He said the incident would be investigated further to make sure such a situation would not repeat itself.
“I learned long ago, when the GPS was introduced, you can’t forget how to navigate using a map and you need to know your environment and not follow technology blindly,” Yaalon said
Source: Arab News