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Jenin warcrimes { April 22 2002 }

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Monday, April 22, 2002 REUTERS

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.



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