Fresh war inquiry blasts Olmert

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Israel's state watchdog has blamed its government and army for severe failures in efforts to protect civilians during the 2006 war with militants in Lebanon.

The State Comptroller said failures were "severe" and "intolerable".

He criticised the prime minister, the army's home front commander, and the ex-defence minister and military chief.

PM Ehud Olmert has accepted failures in the handling of the conflict with Hezbollah, but his officials disagreed with the findings of the latest report.

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said Mr Olmert and his aides "failed gravely in decision making" by not considering the effect of rockets from Lebanon on nearly one million inhabitants of Israel's northern region.

His report says residents were "not substantively protected against missile strikes", although Israeli officials had foreseen the risk of such attacks.

Towns where Arab citizens lived had virtually no shelters at all at their disposal, the report adds.

'Personal views'

"The leaders of the country invested most of their time in the war efforts, and not in treating the home front which was exposed to extensive attack from the outset of the war," the 582-page report said.

Mr Olmert's office criticised remarks by Mr Lindenstrauss as "reflecting the state comptroller's personal views".

His remarks in the report are "characterised by populist and superficial statements... aimed at creating media headlines, and do not reflect the actual report", the statement said.

The army said the state comptroller's recommendations were already in an advanced stage of implementation.

The wartime defence minister, Amir Peretz, and chief of staff, Dan Halutz, resigned in the wake of strong public criticism of their perceived bungling during the crisis.

Forty-three Israeli civilians and 117 soldiers were killed in the war, which continued for 34-days after Hezbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Some 1,200 Lebanese were killed in Israeli military action, most of them civilians.