TEL AVIV, Israel, March 27 (UPI) -- Israeli soldiers found a 22-pound bomb in a Palestinian ambulance that appeared to be transporting a little boy in a West Bank town, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman said Wednesday.
Israeli commanders have claimed for months the Palestinians use ambulances to transport militants and weapons, but the Palestinians denied it and the International Red Cross repeatedly challenged Israel to prove it.
The commander of the Israeli forces in the Ramallah area, Col. Ilan Paz, told reporters the army received an intelligence alert about an attempt to transport a bomb. Reserve soldiers stopped an ambulance carrying a man, a woman and three children.
Islam Jibril, one of those in the vehicle, said a bomb was under a mattress one of the children had been laying on, the IDF spokesman said.
The driver, allegedly an activist in Yasser Arafat's Fatah Tanzim, told interrogators he received a suicide belt and the explosives from one of the top Tanzim activists in Nablus, Mahmud Titi, with instructions to deliver them to someone in Ramallah.
The suicide belt contained 16 pipes and was packed with 22 pounds of explosives, the army said.
The spokesman added, "It was not the first time ambulances are used to transport attackers and explosives and that Palestinian Red Crescent Society workers are sent on missions by terror organizations."
The spokesman said suicide bomber Waffa Idriss, who was killed in Jerusalem in January, worked for the PRCS.
A spokesman for the International Red Cross, Uriel Masad, said the incident was "very saddening, disturbing. It jeopardizes medical humanitarian services and puts them in danger."
However, he added, "It does not reflect on the PRCS as a humanitarian organization dedicated to medical emergency assistance."
