Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Ramadan
Fatwa Audios
Month of Mercy
Women
Eed Al- Fitr
Food Recipes
Videos
Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and destroyed thousands of Gaza Strip homes in attacks that amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International charged today, in the first in-depth human rights group report on the recent war in Gaza.
Amnesty called on Israel to publicly pledge not to use artillery, white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons in densely populated areas. And it urged Hamas rulers to stop rocket fire against Israeli civilians — attacks it also described as "war crimes".
Amnesty — which first accused Israel of war crimes shortly after the fighting ended on Jan. 18 — said "disturbing questions" remain about why high-precision weapons like tank shells and air-delivered bombs and missiles "killed so many children and other civilians."
The group deplored Israel's use of less-precise artillery shells and highly incendiary white phosphorous in built-up areas. It also accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields" and frequently blocking civilians from receiving medical care and humanitarian aid.
The pattern of Israeli attacks and the high number of civilian casualties "showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects," Amnesty International charged.
More than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the three-week offensive, according to Gaza health officials and human rights groups. Israel puts the death toll closer to 1,100. It says the vast majority of the dead were fighters, though it has refused requests to provide a list of the dead.
Amnesty says some 300 children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were among the dead.
Israel did not respond to Amnesty International's repeated requests for information on specific cases detailed in the report and for meetings to discuss the organization's findings, said Donatella Rovera, who headed Amnesty's field research mission.
The 117-page Amnesty report also denounced Hamas for firing rockets into Israel.
"Such unlawful attacks constitute war crimes and are unacceptable," Rovera said.
Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas' Gaza government, commented:"We believe the leaders of the occupation state must be tried for these crimes."
The report was based on physical evidence and testimony that a team of four researchers, including a military expert, gathered from dozens of attack sites in Gaza and southern Israel during and after the war.
It broke little new ground, concentrating on issues, cases and problems that have been dealt with in other frameworks.
Among the Gaza cases cited were the well-documented shelling of a house where a family took refuge on soldiers' orders before 21 people were killed; an Israeli artillery attack near a U.N. school that killed dozens; and the shelling of a house that killed three daughters of a Gaza doctor.
Hamas allowed veteran war crimes investigator Richard Goldstone and his team into Gaza last month.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the probe, claiming the U.N. council overseeing the investigation is "biased".
Israel conducted its own internal investigation earlier this year and cleared the military of "wrongdoing". Human rights groups criticized the probe as a whitewash'
PHOTO CAPTION
boy runs through the ruins of a mosque damaged by Israeli troops on January 23, 2009 in a heavily damaged suburb in Gaza City.
Agencies
Prayer Times
Prayer times for Doha, Qatar 
