Israeli occupation army troops killed five Palestinian men in three separate shootings in the Gaza Strip , occupation army and Palestinian officials said Monday. No weapons were found on any of the five, according to the two sides. The occupation army shot and killed three men in central Gaza late Sunday when they approached a heavily guarded border fence with Israel, an area that Palestinians have tried to infiltrate before, the occupation army said. The bodies were found early Monday.

Also Sunday, near the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, occupation troops shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian who tried to climb a fence bordering an Israeli-controlled area.

Palestinians said the unarmed man was mentally handicapped and wandered into the area by mistake. Occupation troops opened fire because they suspected the man was carrying a weapon - but when they reached the body they found he was not armed, the occupation army said.

In Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, a 36-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by occupation troops who opened fire from the nearby Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, a Palestinian hospital said. Palestinians said the man was unarmed. The occupation army said it was not aware of the incident.

Palestinian resistance men have often fired on Jewish settlements and Israeli occupation troops in the Gaza Strip over the past two years of Mideast fighting. Palestinians accuse the occupation army of firing indiscriminately and often hitting civilians.

GROUP ACCUSES ISRAEL OF WAR CRIMES

Israel committed war crimes, including unlawful killings, during a military offensive in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus earlier this year, the human rights group Amnesty International said Monday.

The Israeli occupation army said the offensive was launched in self-defense, in response to Palestinian 'resistance' attacks on Israeli civilians.

In its report, Amnesty said there is "clear evidence that some of the act committed by the Israel Defense Occupation forces during Operation Defense Shield were war crimes."

Israeli carried out "unlawful killings, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, wanton destruction of hundreds of homes," Amnesty wrote. The group has also accused Palestinian resistance bombers of crimes against humanity.

The latest report said occupation soldiers blocked access to ambulances and denied humanitarian assistance, leaving the wounded and dead lying in the streets for days, and used Palestinians as "human shields" while searching for suspected resistance men.

"Up to now, the Israeli authorities have failed in their responsibility to bring to justice the perpetrators of serious human rights violations," the Amnesty report said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Taub accused Amnesty of ignoring the reasons for the occupation army incursions. "The report describes Israel as going into the West Bank as if this happened in a vacuum," Taub said.

"There really are dilemmas here for any democracy," Taub said, who accused Palestinian fighters of using residential neighborhoods and ambulances for cover during the fighting.

The Amnesty report claimed that more than half the Palestinians killed in Jenin were civilians, but did not give specific figures. At least 16 of the 80 people killed in Nablus were women and children, Amnesty reported.

Israel launched a West Bank offensive on March 29 after a Palestinian resistance bomber killed 29 Israelis. Jenin was the site of the heaviest fighting, and 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli occupation soldiers were killed.

"This terrorist infrastructure was established in the heart of an innocent Palestinian population that served as a cover," the occupation army said in a statement.

Israel has said intense fighting sometimes made it impossible for ambulances to get to the wounded, and said in one case last month, a smuggled explosives belt was found inside a Palestinian ambulance transporting a sick child.

Kathleen Cavanaugh, a researcher for Amnesty International, said Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, who is to become Israel's new defense minister this week, could be charged with war crimes for his role as the occupation army's chief of staff during the incursions.

Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman applauded the report's accusations against Israel.

"The (U.N.) Security Council and the parties that signed the Geneva conventions should take this report as proof of war crimes committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people and act immediately to punish the Sharon government," Rahman said.

The United Nations investigated the Jenin fighting after Palestinians alleged Israel had committed a massacre in the refugee camp. The United Nations ruled that there was no evidence to support the Palestinian claims, and said both Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian 'resistance men' had violated international law.

Amnesty said the Israeli occupation army had failed to "impartially and thoroughly" investigate the events in Jenin.

The report documents witness accounts from Palestinians present during the springtime fighting. They tell stories of torture, beatings of prisoners who were stripped down to their underwear and of occupation soldiers demolishing homes with residents still inside, leaving them to die in the rubble.

PHOTO CAPTION

An elderly Palestinian on his way to a hospital shows an Israeli occupation soldier his injured leg during curfew in the West Bank city of Hebron, November 2, 200