- Palestine
- May 9, 2009
- 2 minutes read
UN experts plan to probe war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza
UN human rights experts announced Friday their intention to make field visits soon in the post-war Gaza Strip to investigate reported war crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces against civilians there.
Reuters news agency quoted the investigation team members as saying that their mission is intended for probing Israeli war crimes that happened in the affected areas of Gaza.
The UN investigators also called on Israel, which had already expressed its reluctance to cooperate with the UN on probes into war crimes, to facilitate their investigation mission.
Many Israeli officials had said that Israel would not cooperate with any UN investigations into its war on Gaza which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians, a vast majority of them were children and women.
This UN investigation team, which is composed of four investigators and headed by former UN war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, were appointed last month and held their first closed-door meeting in Geneva last week.
A number of UN officials such as the high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay had called for an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Israel in the coastal Strip.
Pillay expressed concerns about the Israeli bombing of a home that killed 30 Palestinian civilians and a lack of care for young starving children whose parents died in the attack.
The New York-based human rights watch organization also affirmed that the IOF troops deliberately fired white phosphorus shells on densely populated areas in Gaza needlessly killing and injuring civilians and cited it as evidence of war crimes.
The English Version of JEFF Report after our mission to Gaza
http://www.justiceforpalestinians.net/fonds/CAIBAN6P.pdf