Amnesty Accuses Israel, Hamas of Gaza War Crimes

Amnesty International accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes Thursday in the most comprehensive report on the recent Gaza war. Both sides rejected the findings.

In this Jan. 13, 2009 file photo, smoke rises following explosions caused by Israeli military...

In this Jan. 13, 2009 file photo, smoke rises following explosions caused by Israeli military operations in Gaza City. Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and wantonly destroyed thousands of Gaza Strip homes in attacks that amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International said Thursday July 2, 2009, in the first in-depth human rights group report on the recent war in Gaza.

(Hatem Moussa, File/AP Photo)

Israel used excessive force in violation of international laws of war, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians and destroying thousands of Gaza homes, the human rights group claimed. And Palestinian militants committed war crimes each time they fired a rocket at Israeli civilians, it said.

Israel and Hamas both denounced the report as unbalanced. Israel charged that Amnesty "succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organization." Hamas accused the rights group of downplaying the scale of the destruction Israel left behind.

More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed during the three-week offensive, according to Gaza health officials and human rights groups. Israel, which launched the war in late December to halt years of rocket and mortar attacks on its southern communities, put the death toll closer to 1,100.

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Thirteen Israelis also were killed, including three civilians who died from rocket fire.

Amnesty's 117-page report said "disturbing questions" remained about why high-precision Israeli weapons like tank shells and air-delivered bombs and missiles "killed so many children and other civilians." And it called on Israel to stop using artillery, white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons in densely populated areas.

It also accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields" and frequently blocking civilians from receiving medical care and humanitarian aid.

Amnesty counts some 300 Palestinian children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians among the Gaza dead. Thousands of buildings were also destroyed in what the rights group called sometimes "wanton and deliberate" Israeli assaults.

The Israeli military said the report did not properly recognize "the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel." It also ignored the military's efforts to minimize civilian casualties in a battlefield where Hamas used residential areas, medical facilities, schools and mosques as cover to stage attacks, the military said in a statement.