Source: Press TV
The Israeli military’s killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during its summer 2014 military aggression against the Gaza Strip amounts to war crimes, Amnesty International says.
"It appears that the attacks directly and deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects, which would constitute war crimes," the London-based rights group said in a new report on Wednesday.
It said it has examined eight cases in which Israeli airstrikes targeted homes in Gaza “without warning.”
“Israeli forces have brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused,” Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International, said.
“The report exposes a pattern of attacks on civilian homes by Israeli forces which have shown a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, who were given no warning and had no chance to flee,” he added.
The report has found that in all of these cases, there was either no military objective or the civilian toll was out of all proportion to any military action.
Amnesty claimed that Palestinian resistance movement Hamas fighters used civilian facilities to respond to Israel’s attacks.
It emphasized that regardless of the intended targets, these attacks should have been avoided.
“Given the failure of Israeli and Palestinian authorities to independently and impartially investigate allegations of war crimes, it is imperative that the international community support the involvement of the International Criminal Court (ICC),” the rights group said.
Israel launched a 50-day war on the Gaza Strip in early July. About 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including women, children and elderly people, were killed in the Israeli onslaught. Around 11,000 others were injured. Tens of Israeli soldiers were also killed by the Palestinian resistance retaliatory attacks.