JERUSALEM, 31 December 2005 — El Al Israel Airlines will install anti-missile systems on six passenger jets that fly to areas where the Al-Qaeda terror network has been active, an Israeli transportation official said yesterday.
Installation of the $1 million Flight Guard systems — meant to obstruct a ground-to-air missile fired at an airplane — will begin in the coming days, said Yitzhak Raz, the project’s director at Israel’s Transportation Ministry.
Israel decided to install anti-missile systems on some of its passenger jets in 2002, after militants fired two shoulder-launched missiles at an Israeli Arkia airplane in Kenya, narrowly missing their target.
El Al, Israel’s flagship airline, will not install the system on its entire fleet of jets, Raz said, but rather decide which planes require the expensive equipment based on intelligence and whether their destinations include areas where Al-Qaeda has been active.
Flight Guard, developed 10 years ago by Israel Aircraft Industries for use on military planes, responds automatically to an approaching heat-seeking missile, firing flares to divert the missile from the aircraft.
In a separate development, 500 soldiers were evacuated from their base in southern Israel yesterday after 12 cases of pulmonary infection were detected, military sources said.
Seven of the soldiers have been admitted for observation to the Soroka hospital in Beersheva. The condition of one of them was described as serious.
The military authorities have been in talks with experts on infectious diseases to determine the cause of the illness but the exact cause so far remains a mystery.
— Additional input from Agence France Presse
