Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed 11 Palestinian civilians waving white flags during fighting
in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, according to the Human Rights Watch organisation.
The Israeli military should conduct "thorough, credible investigations into these deaths to tackle the prevailing culture of impunity," the New York-based Human Rights Watch said today in a report.
The Israeli Army Spokesman's Office said in an e-mailed statement today that "investigations into the Israeli military combat operations have clearly shown that soldiers acted in accordance with the rules of war as defined by international law."
The Israeli army on April 22 rejected earlier charges from Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International that its forces committed war crimes during the clashes that ended on January 18. Palestinians have reported that 1,434 Gazans were killed while Israel has put the number of Palestinian deaths at 1,166 and said 13 Israelis were killed in the fighting.
Human Rights Watch said that in the 11 deaths documented in its 63-page report, "evidence strongly indicates that, at the least, Israeli soldiers failed to take all feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants before opening fire, as required by the laws of war."
"The Israeli military is stonewalling in the face of evidence that its soldiers killed civilians waving white flags in areas it controlled and where there were no Palestinian fighters," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report. The military declined repeated requests to discuss the cases in question with Human Rights Watch, the report added.
Israel is looking into about 100 complaints made against its troops and has opened 13 criminal investigations, its August report said. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the "Israeli military operates according to the highest norms and values," and pinned responsibility for injury to civilians on Hamas for “choosing the battlefield and cynically and unacceptably using Palestinians as human shields."
The United Nations is conducting an investigation into the Gaza conflict headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who served as the chief prosecutor at the UN tribunals on violence in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Agencies