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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SAID in a report today that Palestinian rocket fire during the 2014 summer war in Gaza had killed more civilians in the Gaza Strip than in Israel.
Such deadly attacks on civilians on both sides constituted “a war crime,” it said.
The damning report urged armed Palestinian groups to end attacks on civilians in Israel and to protect those in the Gaza Strip from the effects of such attacks.
The militant group Hamas, which de-facto rules Gaza and led fighting against Israel during the conflict, slammed the report as “biased” and accused Amnesty of being a “Zionist organisation”.
The 50-day war killed some 2,200 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, and 73 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.
Amnesty said rocket attacks had killed six civilians in Israel, including a child, but that other rockets aimed at the Jewish state had fallen short and killed at least 13 civilians, 11 of them children, in Gaza.
In the deadliest such attack, “13 Palestinian civilians – 11 of them children – were killed when a projectile exploded next to a supermarket in the crowded Al-Shati refugee camp,” the report said.
Palestinian witnesses blamed the attack on the beachside camp on an Israeli F-16 warplane, but the army denied that, accusing militants of misfiring their own rockets.
Amnesty said “an independent munitions expert who examined the available evidence… concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket.”
Army figures released after the war ended on August 26 showed Gaza militants fired 4,591 projectiles at Israel.
Of those, 3,659 struck Israeli territory and 735 were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system, leaving another 197 falling short and landing inside the coastal enclave.
- ‘Flagrant disregard’ -
Militant groups used unguided projectiles which were “inherently indiscriminate,” the report said, noting they are “prohibited under international law and their use constitutes a war crime.”
Amnesty said Palestinian armed groups “must end all direct attacks on civilians” and take all feasible precautions “to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip from the effects of such attacks,” including storing weapons or letting militants operate “within or near densely populated areas.”
Hamas rejected the findings, saying Amnesty “distorts the truth deliberately, with a clear bias in favour of the Zionist enemy,” or Israel.
The Islamist movement further called Amnesty a “Zionist organisation” and said its report was an “attempt to thwart Palestinian efforts to file a complaint to the International Criminal Court” against Israel, expected on April 1.
The radical Islamic Jihad movement responded that the rocket fire was in self-defence, and did little damage in comparison with Israel’s advanced war machinery.
“This report gives Israel a pretext to launch a new war against Gaza,” spokesman Daud Shihab said.
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You can be sure he’ll be a permanent citizen of this country in no time as per the Kalergi plan. He’d be ejected out of Poland or Hungary after a terrible prison stay but not in weak Western Europe controlled by Sutherland and Soros.
@Ranty McCrank: Where are the open border champions now? He probably is one through his child thanks to meeting an Irish woman…
@Ranty McCrank: this forum explains the tolerance of such activity:
@Ranty McCrank: we’re wussies
@BrianMcB: Explain your open-border point please?
You’re alluding to something vaguely. What is the point you are making?
Are you suggesting we shut down all inward migration?
@Danny Rafferty: how about controlling immigration. Rather than invite all and sundry without restriction why not vet immigrants for illness, criminality and skills and remove them within ,say 10yrs, if they commit a significant crime or is that racist xenophobia?
7 and a half years seems very lenient having regard to the nature and circumstances of this vicious and predatory crime. No contrition, no admission, and he sought to destroy their characters of the victims as part of his vicious defence.
@Fiona deFreyne: joke of a sentence.
Seven and a half years???? That’s just over 3 and a half years per woman he violated, drugged and raped. Enough said really about our justice system.
@WJH: Just want to point out there was no evidence of drugs. I am not denying what they said but there is only the suggestion of drugs. If there was evidence it would have been given. It sounds like they reported it quickly and would have run a blood test.
@WJH: don’t forget the concurrent element of the already laughable sentence…
@Kal Ipers: apparently the rape drug is nearly impossible to detect in tests.
@Kal Ipers: doesn’t matter whether drugs were involved. He was convicted of rape and sexual assault. He is filth, end of story.
@PDiddy: not true. Urban legend
Hopefully he’ll get battered in prison.
@Dj: hopefully but it’s a sad reflection on us as a society when we’re hopeing other criminals deliver justice for us.
He should be fitted for a pair of cement shoes and shown how to swim in them.
Too short, but at least no suspended element. Watch this space for many time wasting, legal aid funded actions brought by this delousional cad.
@Caroline Otoole: The only suspended element of a sentence should involve a tree and a rope.
No comments? Yet? Perhaps this will not be commented on due to his rich South Dublin heritage
@Don Shavago: he’s from Cameroon
@@aidoroch: That sounds a little racist IMHO
@Don Shavago: does it not say in the article he’s originally from Cameroon and then lived in Sligo town? Are you acting thick on purpose or what?
@Don Shavago: what sounds a little racist??? explain me please?? stop using words which you don’t understand
Should be strung up for his actions.
@Ray Farrell: Ah, don’t be racist
@Ray Farrell: …by the nuts. With razor wire.
Just a quick question Tommy. If you think he should be strung up by the nuts with razor wire as punishment, what would you think a suitable punishment for females who commit equally heinous crimes? given they lack nuts.
@Flip off: a solution can be found to that minor mechanical issue
7 years ? Shows how out of touch the judiciary are.
when you have open borders you have to accept the good with the bad this guy should be banned from the country after his release but we know that wont happen, this is a heinous crime against these women
Cultural enrichment.
have your say