JERUSALEM, Oct 5 (AFP) - Israel has arrested 13 UN employees on suspicion of "terrorist activities," a member of the army general staff said Tuesday, as a bitter dispute raged over Israeli claims that Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip abused UN ambulances to ferry weapons.
"We have in hand a list of 13 arrested people against whom charges have been brought," General Israel Ziv said in remarks from a press conference broadcast on Channel Two television.
"They are UN people against whom charges are provided on their implication in terrorist activities."
Ziv gave no details on the jobs or nationalities of those detained.
UN chief Kofi Annan said earlier he would launch a probe into the charges, as the Security Council readied to vote on a draft resolution urging Israel to end its week-long offensive in northern Gaza and allow the United Nations to do its aid work.
The controversy erupted when the army released grainy overhead footage Friday purporting to show Palestinian militants shoving rockets into the back of a clearly marked UN ambulance.
The clip came as troops were pressing a Gaza Strip incursion precisely aimed at stopping cross-border militant rocket attacks on southern Israel, one of which killed two children last week.
The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Peter Hansen, said the blurry pictures, taken by an Israeli drone, showed nothing more than paramedics carrying a folded portable stretcher.
A war of words followed, with Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman, charging that Hansen "hates Israel" and demanding his dismissal.
Hansen said the charges were "malicious propaganda" that endangered the lives of UN staff during a full-blown army raid in the Gaza Strip.
And he said Monday he had no qualms with the fact that some Hamas members figured among UNRWA's many employees.
"Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime," Hansen told Canadian public television, in a reference to the largest Palestinian militant group.
"Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
Hansen stressed that all staff were required to respect "UN standards and norms for neutrality."
Hamas, whose bastion lies in the Gaza Strip, has gained huge popularity for its anti-Israeli attacks, including rocket strikes, since the start of the intifada four years ago.
Gillerman blasted Hansen's comments as "worrying and incredible" and said the army was "convinced that the object that was actually put in that UN vehicle was indeed a weapon and not a stretcher."
A close advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Hansen's acknowledgement "that his organization employs Hamas's terrorists shows the need for an investigation and for probing the use of UN ambulances to carry weapons and terrorists".
"The footage of the ambulance speaks for itself," said Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations.
But Israeli media hinted Tuesday that the army was beginning to reassess its claim. Army officers were quoted by the Haaretz newspaper's online edition as saying "it's impossible to swear" the object was not a stretcher.
The footage itself was taken off the Israeli army website Tuesday afternoon.
And an army spokesman told AFP the military was "reviewing the analysis of the footage in which UNRWA vehicles are seen involved in suspect activity in the combat zone in Gaza".
The driver whose vehicle was filmed by the drone told army radio he had been at the scene to evacuate a Palestinian man wounded by Israeli fire.
"Another ambulance had already ferried him away, so I came back with the folded stretcher and threw it back in the ambulance," Wael Ghabayin told the radio.
In a letter to Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom Monday, Hansen demanded "an immediate public retraction and apology from the government of Israel".
But a senior foreign ministry official said Israel's mission in New York would instead "complain about Hansen through diplomatic channels. He went beyond every limit of not respecting neutrality."
A UN team was due to travel to Israel from New York on Tuesday.