Donated amenities in most of public bomb shelters taken home after war

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
At least one philanthropist who outfitted public bomb shelters in the North with TV sets, furniture, air conditioners and other equipment during the Second Lebanon War has come to see the shelters and found the equipment gone. "He was disappointed and hurt," according to Ra'anan Dinur, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office. In a briefing for reporters on what the government has learned and done in the wake of last summer's war, Dinur said Wednesday that expensive equipment in "hundreds" of public shelters - purchased by the government and private donors for many millions of shekels - has "disappeared," apparently taken home by residents when the war ended or otherwise stolen. If there is another war up North, Dinur said, these goods will have to be produced all over again. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's director-general did not say why nothing had been done to prevent the thefts, why the property had not been catalogued or whether any efforts had been made to catch the thieves.