Reuters - Human Rights Watch urged Israel on Friday to provide a full account
of its air strike on a house in the Gaza Strip that killed 12 civilians last
month, saying the action appeared to have been illegal.
The November 18 attack on the three-storey home of the Dalu family was the
bloodiest of the eight days of fighting between the Jewish state and Gaza's
Islamist Hamas-led armed factions, in which around 170 Palestinians and six
Israelis died.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Israel should have anticipated
the civilian toll and censured it for not proving it was justified in targeting
the home.
Ten members of the Dalu family were killed, along with two
neighbors.
"Attacks in which the expected civilian loss exceeds the anticipated military
gain are serious violations of the laws of war," HRW said in a report.
Israel launched its November assault on the Gaza Strip in what it described
as a defensive effort to disrupt Palestinian rocket capabilities.
"The Israeli claim that the attack on the Dalu home was justified is
unsupported by the facts," said HRW special adviser Fred Abrahams, who conducted
research in Gaza.
"The onus is on Israel to explain why it bombed a home full of civilians
killing 12 people. Anyone who violated the law should be appropriately
punished."
At the time of the attack, the Israeli military said it had struck the
commander of Hamas's rocket-launching operations, naming him as Yihia
Abayah.
The chief military spokesman later said the air force had "tried" to hit
Abayah and the outcome of that attempt was unclear. He acknowledged civilians
had been hurt.
TARGET
On November 28, a mid-level military spokeswoman said one of the Dalu family
members was a Hamas "terror operative" - signaling that Israel considered him a
legitimate target - though she declined to give a name.
Neither would she say if the military knew there had been civilians in the
building.
Among the dead was Mohamed Jamal Dalu, a low-ranking police officer for the
Hamas government, according to Palestinian sources. They said he was not known
to have taken part in fighting against Israel.
The Israeli chief military spokesman's office said on Friday it would respond
to the HRW report in full in the coming days.
It issued an interim statement saying Israel had taken "numerous measures" to
avoid causing innocent casualties, and accused Palestinian guerrillas of putting
civilians at risk by fighting among them.
The military said the Dalu residence had been identified by Israeli
intelligence "as the hideout of a senior Hamas militant who played an important
role in the organization's rocket-launching infrastructure". It did not name the
militant.
No comments:
Post a Comment