IDF chief sacks battalion commander, 5 others for deadly training accident

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot sacked a battalion commander, a deputy battalion commander and four others on Thursday following a training accident earlier this month in which an officer was killed.

Cpt. Yishai Rosales, 23, was killed when a mortar shell landed nearly 1.5 kilometers (one mile) off target on January 5, at the army’s Tzeelim training base in the northern Negev desert.

The army immediately launched an investigation, which ended with Eisenkot’s dismissal of Lt. Col. Tal David and his deputy commander of the Armored Corps’ Romah, or Spear, battalion. A deputy company commander in the tank battalion and three soldiers, who were all found to have been responsible for the training accident, were also relieved of duty, the IDF said.

The incident will also be noted in the official file of Col. Shimon Edri, head of the ground force’s armored training center, which was responsible for the tank battalion’s exercise.

The company commander of the mortar squad which fired the shell was also reprimanded, the IDF said.

On Wednesday, Eisenkot received the results of the probe, which was led by Colonel Ofir Levy, head of a reserve armored brigade. On Thursday morning, the officers and soldiers were informed of their dismissal, Lerner said.

Though these dismissals and formal rebukes mark the end of the initial probe of the incident, the Military Police’s criminal investigation is ongoing, IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said.

“The chief of staff determined that there was a severe professional failure and professional negligence,” he added.

Rosales, from Beit Meir outside of Jerusalem, served in the Kfir Infantry Brigade’s religious Netzah Yehuda battalion and was taking part in a different exercise on the training base when the shell fired by the Romah Battalion landed next to him and exploded. Shrapnel from the blast struck Rosales in the upper body, killing him, the army investigation found.

The mortar squad was preparing for a “capabilities presentation,” a large display of firepower, to mark the end of a training course. They made a mistake while calculating their new target, which resulted in the mortar shell landing 1,450 meters off target, Lerner said.

Initial reports claimed that another soldier was injured during the accident, but this was inaccurate. “Despite several rumors, apart from Rosales, there was nobody else on the spot at the time of the incident,” he said.

David, the battalion commander, was interrogated by military police last week as part of their criminal investigation into the incident, the army said.

The investigation found that in addition to the negligence of the mortar squad, there was insufficient planning for the exercise, Lerner said.

The paperwork for the live-fire drill was not reviewed and approved by the necessary officials, and the plans for the exercise were written in a format that has not been used since 2012, the investigation found.

An estimated 1,000 people were on hand for Rosales’s funeral at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery after his family invited the public to attend.

Many of those who attended were IDF soldiers in uniform and Israelis who immigrated from Latin America,

The Rosales family immigrated to Israel from Mexico several years ago and made the appeal on Channel 2 news, explaining that they have few family members in Israel.