Amnesty International on Tuesday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate possible war crimes committed in August by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants during bloody fighting in Gaza.
The three-day conflict claimed the lives of 31 civilians among the 49 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip under Israeli blockade, according to a new report by the human rights body, which urged the ICC to “urgently investigate any apparent war crimes.” committed during the August 2022 Israeli offensive” on the Palestinian enclave.
“Amnesty International has collected and analyzed new evidence of illegal attacks, including possible war crimes, committed by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups,” it said.
The report details an attack on the Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza, in which seven civilians were killed. The bombing “may have been caused by a failed rocket launched by Palestinian armed groups”, Amnesty said.
Fighting began on August 5, when Israel preemptively attacked the Islamic Jihad militant group to prevent attacks. The Palestinian group responded with rockets that caused no casualties among Israelis.
The Amnesty investigation pointed out that an attack in which five children died in a cemetery “would have been carried out by an Israeli guided missile fired by a drone”.
A third incident that could constitute a war crime, according to Amnesty, was the firing of an Israeli tank into a house in the southern part of Khan Yunis, which left a civilian dead.
The ICC has opened an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is expected to focus, in part, on possible war crimes committed during the 2014 conflict in Gaza. The investigation is supported by the Palestinian Authority, but Israel is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction.
The August violence was preceded by four wars between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza since 2008. The Palestinian enclave faces a blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 after the Islamist movement Hamas took control of that territory. According to the movement, its militants were not involved in the August conflict.
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