Amnesty accuses Israel of Jenin war crimes
LONDON (Reuters) - Amnesty International accused Israel Monday
of serious human rights abuses during its occupation of the
Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin and pressed for a full
investigation to see if they amounted to war crimes.
Basing its allegations on statements from Palestinians and what
it said was evidence from its own observers who entered the West
Bank town minutes after the Israeli withdrawal, Amnesty said it
had clear evidence of serious crimes.
"We have concluded, on a preliminary basis, that very
serious violations of human rights were committed. We are talking
here (about) war crimes," Javier Zuniga, the human rights
group's regional director, told a news conference.
"We believe that Israel has a case to answer."
Palestinians say several hundred people may have died during
the Jenin offensive, part of an assault on the West Bank launched
after scores of Israelis died in a wave of Palestinian suicide
bombings.
Israel has come under international pressure over the incursion
into the camp, which it described as a nest of terrorists. It says
about 70 Palestinians, mostly fighters, died during fierce street
battles.
The Israeli army has denied allegations of a
"massacre" and said it took every precaution to avoid
civilian casualties although it has admitted some were killed in
the fighting, which reduced large swaths of the refugee camp to
rubble.
CHILDREN, ELDERLY CAUGHT IN FIGHTING
Kathleen Cavanaugh, a law lecturer from Galway University in
Ireland, said Amnesty's charges came under three major areas: the
destruction of property, the use of excessive force and its
failure to protect civilian refugees living in the town.
She also cited Palestinian witness statements suggesting the
army had carried out "a number of extrajudicial executions,
particularly at the early stages of its incursion."
Old people and children caught up in the fighting said they had
also been given no chance to flee, Cavanaugh said.
Forensic pathologist Derrick Pounder from Dundee University in
Scotland, who had just returned from Jenin, said the lack of
severely injured people admitted to the hospital backed claims
that Palestinian doctors and ambulance men had been impeded.
"There were no severely injured in the hospital, and very
few corpses. It is inconceivable that, as well as the dead, there
were not large numbers of severely injured," said Pounder,
who estimated a conflict of this nature and intensity would have
produced roughly three badly injured victims to every one dead.
He said he saw 21 Palestinians corpses in Jenin hospital. The
casualties were a mixture of civilian and military, he said, and
included three women.
One was a 52-year-old man, wearing sandals, who had been shot
in the chest, and another 38-year-old, wearing ordinary clothes,
had been shot in the back and the top of the foot.
"The claim that only fighters were killed is simply not
true," Pounder said. "In Jenin, there have certainly
been mass killings -- both of combatants and civilians."
Pounder said the refugee camp should now be treated as a crime
scene, and a full international team of investigators similar to
The Hague Tribunal for former Yugoslavia be allowed in to try and
piece together exactly what happened.
Amnesty said it had found no evidence of mass graves or any
support for allegations that women had been raped by troops.