Israeli Rights group says Israel engaged in "wilful killings"

Rights group says Israel engaged in "wilful killings"
Fri Nov 17, 2006 3:42 PM GMT

By Luke Baker


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli human rights group has called for an immediate military investigation into the deaths of two wounded and unarmed Palestinians shot during an army raid in the occupied West Bank this month.

B'Tselem, an independent group that monitors Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories, said eyewitnesses had described a sequence of events that contradicted the Israeli military's account of the raid on November 7-8, and that there was evidence Israeli forces had engaged in unlawful killing.

"B'Tselem's investigation indicates that Salim Abu al-Heijah and Mahmoud Abu Hassan were executed by soldiers while they lay wounded, unarmed and posed no risk to the soldiers," the group said in a report posted on its Web site.

"Even if the operation in Yamun was part of combat rather than law-enforcement activities, as Israel often claims, the killing of the two men constituted a grave breach of the laws of war in international humanitarian law.

"These laws categorically prohibit wilful killing of combatants who can no longer defend themselves due to injury... Such a killing is defined as a war crime," it said.

In an official response to the report, the Israeli army said its troops had entered a house in Yamun, near Jenin, only after being told by residents that there was no one left inside, and then discovered several suspected militants hiding there.

"During the searching, the force identified several suspicious figures inside the structure and fired at them," the army said in a statement faxed to Reuters.

"It is important to stress that the Palestinians who were asked by the force whether all of the structure's residents had left not only concealed the fact that the gunmen were inside, but told the force that the structure was totally vacant."

The army said troops had found assault rifles, a handgun and matching ammunition in a subsequent search of the property.

It is not the first time Israeli troops have been accused of "wilful" killing. In May 2005, B'Tselem said it had found evidence Israeli soldiers were conducting "assassinations rather than arrest operations" during West Bank raids.

Israeli troops carry out almost daily raids in towns across the West Bank, especially around Jenin, which is regarded as a militant stronghold. Israeli forces have occupied the West Bank since capturing the territory in the 1967 Middle East war.

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