3:00 A.M. Tel Aviv Red Alert Warning ‘Human Error,’ IDF Says

The Red Alert warning that went off in Tel Aviv at 3:00 a.m. early last Thursday, causing thousands to call authorities in panic, was the result of “human error,” the IDF said at the end of an investigation into the matter. The incident, which occurred a week ago Thursday, roused thousands of Tel Aviv area residents from a deep slumber, with some preparing to head for bomb shelters, until the IDF soon afterward issued a statement saying that the missile warnings were a false alarm.

That statement was not released before police and civil defense officials had gotten thousands of phone calls asking about the imminent danger. The alarms came after foreign reports that IDF planes had bombed several targets in Syria, striking weapons warehouses in the town of Hasya, near the Syria-Lebanon border. Also in the background of the alarm was the IDF strike on a Gaza terror tunnel earlier this week, in which 14 terrorists were killed, several of them high-level members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“Human error” was what the IDF racked up the siren to, in its conclusive statement Thursday. With that, the statement said, the army and Homefront Command “had gained valuable information from the investigation and developed new understandings, which will be put to use in order to reduce or eliminate false warnings.”