Saturday May 09, 2009 02:39 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

UN experts are planning to visit Gaza in the coming period to probe claims of Israeli military war crimes committed during the offensive against the Gaza Strip in which more than 14000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, were killed and thousands were wounded.

The UN renewed its call on Israel to support the investigation, yet Israel said that it had conducted its own investigation and reached the conclusion that the army “acted professional and tried to avoid civilian casualties”.

Israel officials stated last month that Israel will not cooperate with the UN investigation team.

The four-person team will be headed by Richard Goldstone, a former UN War Crimes investigator.

Reuters news agency reported that the team would visit several areas in the Gaza Strip and also the West Bank, and that it demanded Israel to fully cooperate with the investigation.

Meanwhile, Goldstone stated that a professional investigation would serve the interests of all parties.

It is worth mentioning that Human Rights Watch, based in New York, stated that Israel used white Phosphorous shells in shelling crowded residential areas in the Gaza Strip causing casualties among the civilians.  

UN experts plan to probe war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza

[ 09/05/2009 - 09:54 AM ]

GENEVA, (PIC)--

UN human rights experts announced Friday their intention to make field visits soon in the post-war Gaza Strip to investigate reported war crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces against civilians there.

Reuters news agency quoted the investigation team members as saying that their mission is intended for probing Israeli war crimes that happened in the affected areas of Gaza.

The UN investigators also called on Israel, which had already expressed its reluctance to cooperate with the UN on probes into war crimes, to facilitate their investigation mission.

Many Israeli officials had said that Israel would not cooperate with any UN investigations into its war on Gaza which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians, a vast majority of them were children and women.

This UN investigation team, which is composed of four investigators and headed by former UN war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, were appointed last month and held their first closed-door meeting in Geneva last week.

A number of UN officials such as the high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay had called for an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Israel in the coastal Strip.

Pillay expressed concerns about the Israeli bombing of a home that killed 30 Palestinian civilians and a lack of care for young starving children whose parents died in the attack.

The New York-based human rights watch organization also affirmed that the IOF troops deliberately fired white phosphorus shells on densely populated areas in Gaza needlessly killing and injuring civilians and cited it as evidence of war crimes.