A long-awaited UN report rejects Palestinian claims that Israeli forces carried out a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, but it criticizes both sides for putting civilian lives at risk, Western diplomats said.
Israel, which had repeatedly denied any massacre took place, praised the report, prepared by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and due for release later yesterday. Annan began gathering the report after Israel refused to let a UN fact-finding mission probe its military assault on the camp.
The violence in Jenin came amid an Israeli offensive across the West Bank launched March 29 after a suicide bombing that killed 29 Israelis. The Jenin camp saw the heaviest fighting, and Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said in mid-April that 500 people had been killed.
But the UN report said 52 Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by April 18, and that up to half may have been civilians. It called the Palestinian allegation that some 500 were killed "a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of evidence that has emerged," the diplomats said Wednesday.
The UN findings mirrored those of Human Rights Watch, which said its experts had found nothing to back allegations of an Israeli army massacre. Human-rights groups have said 22 civilians were killed in Jenin.
Israel had said dozens of Palestinians -- most of them gunmen -- were killed in the fierce fighting that flattened homes in the center of Jenin camp. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were also killed in the battle with Palestinian militants.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled said the report made "clear that the Palestinian allegations that a massacre took place were false."
"Israel welcomes this finding, as well as the determination that the armed Palestinians deliberately took up position in a densely populated locality," Peled said.
Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath called the report "an important step. I know it does not satisfy everybody and that it was not done in the way it should be, which is sending a commission to Jenin."
The Palestinians accused Israel of committing "war crimes" and "atrocities" in Jenin and said the key outstanding issue was whether the attacks constituted "a massacre and a crime against humanity."
The report was also to look into attacks on other Palestinian cities assaulted by the Israeli army during the campaign.
Between March 1 and the beginning of May, the report said 497 Palestinians were killed during Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank, according to diplomats who got advance copies and spoke on condition of anonymity.
That figure was almost double the death toll of 262 reported by the Red Crescent Society in the Palestinian territories for the same period.
The report accused Israel of increasing the suffering of Palestinian civilians by imposing curfews, closing off cities and delaying access to medical care and humanitarian aid, the diplomats said.
And it charged Palestinian militants with deliberately putting their fighters and equipment in civilian areas in violation of international law, they said.
The report was based on information from UN officials, the Palestinians, five UN member states, private relief organizations and documents in the public domain, the diplomats said.
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