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Nov. 29, 2004
Captain Moshe Taranto killed in Rafah arms tunnel collapse
By Margot Dudkevitch
Capt. Moshe Taranto, 23, of Ashdod, the commander of the IDF’s elite tunnel-busting unit, was killed and another officer lightly wounded when a deep ditch parallel to a weapons-smuggling tunnel collapsed, burying them in sand on the Philadelphi Route in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon.
A previous attempt to determine the location and depth of the tunnel on October 21 was suspended when a bomb exploded, killing Sgt.-Maj. Moshe Elmaliah of Dimona.
The officers were extricated within minutes, but attempts to revive Taranto failed. The wounded officer was airlifted to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba and later released.
Taranto will be buried Tuesday at 2 p. m. in the Ashdod Military Cemetery.
Taranto took over as head of the unit after his best friend and former commander of the unit, Lt. Aviv Hakani, was killed along with four other soldiers in May when their armored personnel carrier, which contained explosives to blow up a tunnel, was hit by an antitank rocket.
Initially the two officers had attempted to enter via the tunnel opening, but realized that they were unable to proceed, an IDF officer told The Jerusalem Post. A decision was then made to dig a deep trench on either side of the area where they suspected the tunnel was located and use electronic devices to find it. Taranto jumped into the ditch, which was reportedly 10 meters deep, and the second officer followed. The mounds of sand surrounding the ditch caved in, burying the two officers. At the time of the incident the bulldozers used to dig the ditches were not working, the officer said.
Other officers questioned the decision to carry out such activities while the ground was still damp from a recent rainfall. "The soldiers were aware of the approximate location of the tunnel. Perhaps it would have been wiser to postpone operations until the ground was dry," one officer said.
The OC Southern Command has launched an investigation, which will be headed by Brig.-Gen. Shimon Daniel, head of the Engineering Corps, to determine whether the proper procedures were followed when the incident occurred.
Taranto’s father, Aharon, questioned the decision to send soldiers into tunnels. He noted that his son and Hakani were the best of friends, and after Hakani’s death his son was asked to command the unit even though he was on the verge of release and had already signed up for university studies. Instead, said Taranto, his son agreed to sign up for further military service. "He mulled over the decision for some time but then told me, ’Dad, someone has to do the job.’"
Taranto is survived by his parents and two brothers.
In June the army decided to boost the tunnel-busting unit by recruiting troops from the Engineering Corps’s elite Yahalom unit. Hakani had persuaded the army to enlarge the unit and provide its soldiers with special training and equipment.
On November 18, the army assisted in extricating three Palestinians who were buried when the weapons-smuggling tunnel they were digging collapsed near Rafah. After a number of hours the three were rescued and taken to hospital and from there handed over to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
In June, St.-Sgt. Ro’i Nissim was killed and five soldiers were wounded when a tunnel rigged with explosives blew up underneath the Orhan outpost in Gush Katif. Last December, IDF soldiers remained unscathed after a bomb containing hundreds of kilograms of explosives blew up on the wall of the Hardon outpost. The bomb had been placed inside a tunnel leading up to the outpost’s wall. An hour later a second bomb on the eastern side of the outpost blew up, also causing no damage.
In Memoriam
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