JERUSALEM, Nov 24: The Israeli army's chief of staff admitted on Wednesday that an initial investigation that cleared a military commander accused of emptying his weapon into a Palestinian schoolgirl had been a serious failure.

"One of the basic things we rely on is trustworthiness, telling the truth," General Moshe Yaalon told army radio. "The fact that the inquiry did not reveal the whole truth is a grave failure. I am determined to deal with any incident of this kind in order to purge any moral failures from the Israel Defence Forces."

The official, who has not been named, was formally indicted by a military court on Monday on two counts of illegal use of a weapon, two counts of inappropriate behaviour and exceeding his authority and one count of obstruction of justice.

The indictments followed a military police investigation into an incident on Oct 5 in which 13-year-old Iman al-Hams was shot dead by soldiers in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on suspicion she was carrying explosives in her school satchel.

A fellow soldier testified that the commander then fired into the girl's body several times. The doctor who examined the body said it was riddled with 20 bullets, including five in the head.

The charges were levelled just five weeks after the soldier was cleared of any wrongdoing in the first army investigation. The case has become a major embarrassment for the army.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Yaalon said soldiers had justified firing at the girl whom they suspected of wanting to distract their attention and lead them away from the tower so Palestinian snipers could shoot them.

However, a tape recording of radio exchanges between soldiers involved in the incident, which was broadcast on Israeli television this week, appeared to show that soldiers manning an observation point had identified Iman as a young girl who did not represent a danger.

"It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward - a girl of about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death," one soldier said on the army communications network tape. -AFP