HRW condemns Israeli drone strikes on Gaza

NEW YORK - An international human rights group on Tuesday accused Israel of violating the laws of war and killing civilians in the recent Gaza offensive.
In a new report issued Tuesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Israel used the most precise weapon in its arsenal-guided missiles fired from unmanned drones- and killed tens of people who were not taking part in hostilities.
In the 39-page report titled Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles, the organisation documented the death of 29 civilians, eight of them were children, in six drone airstrikes in Gaza during the three-week fighting which started on December 27, 2008.
More than 14,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military operation against Gaza but Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have reported a total of 42 drone attacks that killed 87 civilians in all during the war.
Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces failed to take all feasible precautions to verify that these targets were combatants, as required by the laws of war, or that they failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians, the group said in a press release.
Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch, said Marc Garlasco, HRW senior military analyst and co-author of the report. Given these capabilities, Israel needs to explain why these civilian deaths took place.
The organisation also demanded Israel to release all video recordings taken by the drone planes before and during their strikes into Gaza.
The report calls on Israel and Hamas to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission, led by South African prosecutor Richard Goldstone, which investigates the recent violations. But Israel has refused to do so.
AFP adds: It is absolutely unacceptable, clearly unlawful and not what we expect from the worlds most moral military, Marc Garlasco.
It looks as if they had almost an itchy trigger finger, said Garlasco, who was previously a Pentagon intelligence official in charge of strikes on high-value targets during the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq.
He added that the unmanned drones, which can hover over an area for more than 24 hours at a time and are equipped with precision cameras, are the most precise, the most distinguishing of all weapons that any military has in its arsenal.
We were quite surprised during our mission in Gaza to actually find so many civilians killed by these weapons, he added, saying the level of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Gaza was nowhere near the level seen in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Hezbollah.
The Israeli military slammed the report and insisted it made every effort to spare civilians during the fighting.
(The military) made use of advanced technology, tactics and weapon systems which minimised the risk to non-combatants and civilian property, it said.
This was done while confronting terrorists, who intentionally operated from within the Gaza Strips densely populated areas and used civilians as human shields, it added in a written statement.
The military faulted the group for relying on the testimony of Palestinian witnesses whose knowledge of military issues is doubtful.
But the rights group, which reports on dozens of conflict zones across the world, said Israeli authorities did not respond to a list of detailed questions on each incident sent to them in March and reprinted in the report.
Israel prevented media or human rights monitors from entering Gaza during and immediately after the war and has declined to meet with Human Rights Watch.
The group provided a detailed analysis of six strikes in which drones killed 29 civilians, including eight children, and said it chose the cases because it was clear there were no fighting or militants in the area of the attacks.
In the deadliest incident, on December 27, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a group of people waiting at a bus stop in central Gaza City, killing nine students, two of them women, and three other civilians.
The attack took place in broad daylight during the opening air assault on the territory, several days before any Israeli ground forces entered.
In another case, on January 5, a drone missile struck the UN-run Asma primary school in Gaza City, killing three young men from the same family while they were using the toilet, the group said.