Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday said that both Israel and Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas “apparently” committed “war crimes” during a May conflict, calling for the incidents to be probed as part of ongoing international investigations.
The 11-day conflict saw Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza fire thousands of rockets toward Israel, which pounded the strip with hundreds of air strikes.
In a report released yesterday, the group said it had investigated three Israeli attacks that “killed 62 Palestinian civilians where there were no evident military targets in the vicinity,” interviewing Palestinians in Gaza and analyzing data from the sites and digital imagery.
Photo: AP
It listed a May 10 strike in Beit Hanoun, one on May 15 at al-Shati refugee camp and a series of air strikes on May 16 in Gaza City as the focus of its investigation, but noted “other Israeli attacks during the conflict were also likely unlawful.”
The rights group also noted the “indiscriminate” rocket attacks by Palestinian militants that targeted Israeli civilians, which HRW said would be addressed in a forthcoming report.
The Israeli and Palestinian attacks “violated the laws of war and apparently amount to war crimes,” it said.
The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March announced the opening of a full investigation into the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories.
That probe would mainly focus on the 2014 Gaza War, but would also look at the deaths of Palestinian demonstrators from 2018 onwards.
However, the ICC said in May that it was also monitoring the latest conflict as part of its investigation.
“Israeli authorities’ consistent unwillingness to seriously investigate alleged war crimes, as well as Palestinian forces’ rocket attacks towards Israeli population centres, underscores the importance of the International Criminal Court’s inquiry,” HRW said.
In a separate international probe, the UN Human Rights Council on May 27 decided to create an open-ended international investigation into violations during the May conflict.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli army, which was quoted in the HRW report as saying it “strikes military targets exclusively” and “makes concerted efforts to reduce harm to uninvolved individuals.”
When possible, the army “provided civilians located within military targets with prior warning,” while it was investigating a number of attacks to determine if its rules were breached, HRW cited the Israeli military as saying.
The conflict killed 260 Palestinians including some fighters, according to Gaza authorities.
In Israel, 13 people were killed, including a soldier, by rockets and other munitions fired from Gaza, the police and army said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion