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Israeli attacks on Gaza 'apparently amount to war crimes'

Human Rights Watch has accused the Israeli military of carrying out attacks that "apparently amount to war crimes" during an 11-day war in May against the Hamas militant group.

The international human rights organisation issued its conclusions on Tuesday after investigating three Israeli airstrikes that it said killed 62 Palestinian civilians. 

It said "there were no evident military targets in the vicinity" of the attacks.

READ MORE: UN rights chief says Israeli strikes in Gaza may be war crimes

The report also accused Palestinian militants of apparent war crimes by launching more than 4000 unguided rockets and mortars at Israeli population centres. 

Such attacks, it said, violated "the prohibition against deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians."

The report, however, focused on Israeli actions during the fighting, and the group said it would issue a separate report on the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in August.

"Israeli forces carried out attacks in Gaza in May that devastated entire families without any apparent military target nearby," said Gerry Simpson, associate crisis and conflict director at HRW.

He said Israel's "consistent unwillingness to seriously investigate alleged war crimes," coupled with Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilian areas, underscored the importance of an ongoing investigation into both sides by the International Criminal Court, or ICC.

In a statement, the Israeli army said its attacks were aimed at military targets and that it took numerous precautions to avoid harming civilians. It said Hamas was responsible for civilian casualties because it launched attacks from residential areas.

READ MORE: Sydney charity worker tells of conflict's 'heartbreaking' toll on children

"While the terror organisations in the Gaza Strip deliberately embed their military assets in densely populated civilian areas, the IDF takes every feasible measure to minimise, as much as possible, the harm to civilians and civilian property," it said.

The war erupted on May 10 after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem in support of Palestinian protests against Israel's heavy-handed policing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, built on a contested site sacred to Jews and Muslims, and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers in a nearby neighbourhood. 

Israel has said it struck more than 1000 targets during the fighting. In all, some 254 people were killed in Gaza, including at least 67 children and 39 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 

Hamas has acknowledged the deaths of 80 militants, while Israel has claimed the number is much higher. Twelve civilians, including two children, were killed in Israel, along with one soldier.

The HRW report looked into Israeli airstrikes. The most serious, on May 16, involved a series of strikes on Al-Wahda Street, a central thoroughfare in downtown Gaza City. 

The airstrikes destroyed three apartment buildings and killed a total of 44 civilians, HRW said, including 18 children and 14 women. Twenty-two of the dead were members of a single family, the al-Kawlaks.

READ MORE: Palestinians see victory in Gaza truce as Israel warns Hamas

The Israeli military said the attacks were aimed at tunnels used by Hamas militants in the area. The airstrikes unexpectedly caused nearby buildings to coLlapse, leading to "unintended casualties," it said.

In its investigation, HRW concluded that Israel had used US-made GBU-31 precision-guided bombs, and that it did not warn residents to evacuate the area ahead of time. It also found no evidence of military targets in the area.

"An attack that is not directed at a specific military objective is unlawful," it wrote.

The investigation also looked at a May 10 explosion that killed eight people, including six children, near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. It said the two adults were civilians.

In its statement, the Israeli military said the casualties were caused by errant rocket fire launched by militant groups, not Israeli airstrikes. 

It released aerial photos of what it said was the launch site, some 7.5km away, and the landing area. It also said it did not carry out any strikes in the area at the time of the explosion.

But based on an analysis of munition remnants and witness accounts, HRW said evidence indicated the weapon had been "a type of guided missile" used by Israel.

"Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target at or near the site of the strike," it said.

READ MORE: Benjamin Netanyahu's historic period ruling Israel is over

The New York-based group said Israel refused to allow its investigators to enter Gaza. Instead, it said it relied on a field researcher based in Gaza, along with satellite images, expert reviews of photos of munitions fragments and interviews conducted by video and telephone.

The third attack HRW investigated occurred on May 15, in which an Israeli airstrike destroyed a three-story building in Gaza's Shati refugee camp. The strike killed 10 people, including two women and eight children.

Israel said the target was a group of senior Hamas officials hiding in an apartment, and that the civilian deaths were unintended and "under review."

But Human Rights Watch said it found no evidence of a military target at or near the site and called for an investigation into whether there was a legitimate military objective and "all feasible precautions" were taken to avoid civilian casualties. HRW investigators concluded the building was hit by a US-made guided missile.

READ MORE: Israel strikes Gaza after Hamas fires incendiary balloons

The May conflict was the fourth war between Israel and Hamas since the Islamic militant group, which opposes Israel's existence, seized control of Gaza in 2007. Human Rights Watch, other rights groups and UN officials have accused both sides of committing war crimes in all of the conflicts.

Early this year, HRW accused Israel of being guilty of international crimes of apartheid because of discriminatory polices toward Palestinians, both inside Israel as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel rejected the accusations.

In Tuesday's report, HRW called on the United States to condition security assistance to Israel on it taking "concrete and verifiable actions" to comply with international human rights law and to investigate past abuses.

It also called on the ICC to include the recent Gaza war in its ongoing investigation into possible war crimes by Israel and Palestinian militants. Israel does not recognise the court's jurisdiction and says it is capable of investigating any possible wrongdoing by its army and that the ICC probe is unfair and politically motivated.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim called for Israeli leaders to be brought before "international tribunals." He also claimed that the Hamas rocket fire was a "legitimate right to resist the occupation."

headline

At least one dead after explosion at German chemical complex

An explosion at an industrial park for chemical companies in Germany killed at least one person Tuesday, with 31 others injured and four missing. Fire officials who tested the air said there did not appear to be a danger to nearby residents after authorities initially urged people to shelter inside.

The explosion at the waste management facility of the Chempark site in the city of Leverkusen, near Cologne, sent a large black cloud into the air. It took firefighters almost four hours to extinguish the fire that took hold after the explosion.

Germany's Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance initially classified the incident as "an extreme threat". Later on Tuesday, however, the Cologne fire department tweeted that measurements of the air's pollution "do not show any kind of abnormality". They said the smoke had gone down but that they would continue to measure the air for toxins.

The city of Leverkusen said in a statement that the explosion occurred in storage tanks for solvents. Police said Tuesday afternoon that 31 people were injured, with five of them in intensive care. They didn't give any details on their identities, the age of the dead person and the injured people because not all family members had been informed yet.

"We are deeply concerned about this tragic accident and the death of our employee," the head of Chempark, Lars Friedrich, told reporters in Leverkusen. "We are doing everything to get this situation under control as quickly as possible — we know that the people of Leverkusen are very concerned."

City officials asked all residents to stay inside until the late afternoon and warned people from outside of Leverkusen to avoid the region. City officials later also warned people not to let children play outside, use outside pools or eat fruit and vegetables from their backyards in the coming days. They said experts would only be able to tell in a few days how toxic the soot of the explosion would be.

Currenta, the company operating the chemical park, said the explosion happened at 9.40am and then developed into a fire. They said three big tanks were affected by the explosion, but that it was too early to know the cause of the explosion.

"Sirens were operated to warn residents and warning alerts were sent," Currenta said in the statement.

Police in nearby Cologne said a large number of officers, firefighters, helicopters and ambulances from across the region had been deployed to the scene. They also shut down several nearby major highways for several hours.

Leverkusen is home to Bayer, one of Germany's biggest chemical companies. It has about 163,000 residents and borders Cologne, which is Germany's fourth biggest city and has around 1 million inhabitants. Many residents work at Bayer, which is one of the biggest employers in the region.

The chemical park is located very close to the banks of the Rhine river.

Currenta has three facilities in the region. More than 70 different companies are based at the locations in Leverkusen, Dormagen and Krefeld-Uerdingen.

The mayor of Leverkusen, Uwe Richrath, called the blast "a tragic moment for Leverkusen."

"It was a huge detonation felt in all over the entire city," he said. "I hope the four missing people are still alive."