U.N. reports say Israel targeted civilians in Gaza

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations investigators said on Monday Israel violated a range of human rights during its invasion of Gaza, including targeting civilians and using a child as a human shield.

The accusations came in reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council which also called for an urgent end to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian supplies to Gaza and a full international investigation into the conflict.

"Civilian targets, particularly homes and their occupants, appear to have taken the brunt of the attacks, but schools and medical facilities have also been hit," said one report by Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

The Sri Lankan human rights lawyer visited the region in early February. She cited a long series of incidents to back her charges.

In one, she said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.

In another, on January 15, at Tal al Hawa south-west of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers forced an 11-year-old boy to walk in front of them for several hours as they moved through the town, even after they had been shot at.

An Israeli commander in the 22-day Gaza invasion said on Monday Israel's efforts to protect troops from Palestinian fire may have contributed to unwarranted killing of civilians.

"If you want to know whether I think that in doing so we killed innocents, the answer is, unequivocally, yes," Tzvika Fogel, a reserve brigadier-general, told Reuters. Fogel added that such incidents were exceptional.