Amnesty slammed for report on Gaza incursion

Amnesty called on Israel to publicly pledge not to use artillery, white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons in densely populated areas.

And it urged Gaza's Hamas rulers to stop rocket fire against Israeli civilians - attacks it also described as war crimes.

Report 'unbalanced'

Israel and Hamas both denounced the report as unbalanced.

Israel charged that Amnesty "succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation" and Hamas accused the rights group of downplaying the scale of the destruction Israel left behind.

Amnesty - which first accused Israel of war crimes shortly after the fighting ended on January 18 - said "disturbing questions" remain about why high-precision weapons like tank shells and air-delivered bombs and missiles "killed so many children and other civilians".

The group deplored Israel's use of less-precise artillery shells and highly incendiary white phosphorous in built-up areas. It also accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields" and frequently blocking civilians from receiving medical care and humanitarian aid.

Targeting civilians criticised

The pattern of Israeli attacks and the high number of civilian casualties "showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects," Amnesty International charged.

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 incursion to halt years of rocket and mortar attacks on its southern communities, puts the death toll closer to 1,100. It says the vast majority of the dead were militants, though it has refused requests to provide a list of the dead.

Amnesty says some 300 children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were among the dead. Thirteen Israelis also were killed, including three civilians who died by rocket fire.

Rocket fire 'unbearable reality'

The Israeli military rejected the report's findings, saying it did not properly recognise "the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel".

The report, the military added, ignored the military's efforts to minimise civilian casualties in a battlefield where Hamas used residential areas, medical facilities, schools and mosques as cover to stage attacks.

"It presents a distorted view of the laws of war that does not comply with the rules implemented by democratic states battling terror," the military said in a statement.

The 117-page Amnesty report also denounced Hamas for firing rockets into Israel.

"Such unlawful attacks constitute war crimes and are unacceptable," Rovera said.

Hamas 'resisting occupation'

Hamas called a news conference on Thursday to denounce the report.

"The report equated the victim and the executioner and denied our people's right to resist the occupation," said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

 "The report ignores the scale of destruction and serious crimes committed by the occupation in Gaza ... and provides a misleading description in order to reduce the magnitude of the Israeli crimes."

The report was based on physical evidence and testimony that a team of four researchers, including a military expert, gathered from dozens of attack sites in Gaza and southern Israel during and after the incursion.

It broke little new ground, concentrating on issues, cases and problems that have been dealt with in other frameworks.