Rights groups ask UN for human rights monitors in Gaza, Israel

Jan 9, 2009, 21:05 GMT

New York - Human rights group Amnesty International Friday called on the United Nations Security Council to deploy human rights investigators in Israel and the Gaza Strip and to hold the warring parties accountable for war crimes.

The London-based group said in a letter to the 15-nation council that it should take 'firm action to ensure full accountability for war crimes and other serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law' in Gaza.

It asked that investigators be sent to Gaza and southern Israel to report on abuses by all parties in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On Thursday, the council adopted a resolution calling for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire. But the truce call was rejected by both Israel and Hamas, which continued fighting Friday.

Amnesty criticized the UN resolution for not addressing war crimes and other serious abuses of international law, or providing for an investigation of those abuses.

'The security council must ensure that there is full accountability for all such crimes committed during the conflict,' Amnesty said.

The UN reported 792 people killed and thousands others injured. It said up to 15 per cent of the dead were women and children.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which investigated and pursued Nazis involved in the Holocaust, demanded a probe into allegations that Hamas used human shields in the conflict with Israel.

'Any UN investigation of the current situation in Gaza must first focus on Hamas' uses of human shields and the terrorist group's core strategy of systematically deploying rocket launchers and other military hardware in, under and around schools, mosques, homes and shopping areas,' the Los Angeles-based centre said.

In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, told the Human Rights Council that 'grave violations' of human rights have been committed in Gaza. She urged the council to discuss the issue of war crimes in the Gaza.

'I remind this council that violations of international humanitarian law may constitute war crimes for which individual criminal responsibility may be invoked,' Pillay said.