Israel used US missile in strike

Over a week after we first asked them, the Pentagon says it cannot explain how an American air-to-ground missile - apparently sold to the US military eight years ago -came to be fired at an ambulance in Lebanon last year by an Israeli helicopter pilot, killing four children and two women, writes Robert Fisk in Beirut

After the Independent on Sunday shipped a fragment to the US, it was confirmed that the Hellfire missile was US-made. But while Israel routinely purchases weapons from America, the serial number on the fragment suggests it was sold to the US government.

The Pentagon said yesterday that the State Department would now have to be consulted.

The destruction of the ambulance, at the height of `Grapes of Wrath', aroused worldwide condemnation.