UN Special Rapporteur, who monitors the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk denounced as a war crime Israeli forces for their ongoing killing and wounding of Palestinian protesters, including children.
“The deaths of seven more participants in the Gaza demonstrations, and the wounding of more than 200 others this past Friday, indicates that the Israeli security forces are not heeding the international criticism of their use of lethal fire against Palestinian demonstrators,” said Lynk in a statement.
He stressed that protesters “appear to pose no credible threat to Israeli security forces.”
Two of the Palestinians killed on Friday were boys aged 11 and 14.
One Gaza-based human rights group, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, estimated that 163 of the injured demonstrators were shot with live fire.
The demonstrations at the border fence against Israel’s longstanding blockade and the deteriorating living conditions in Gaza – referred to by Palestinians as the “Great March of Return” – started on 30 March.
Since then, more than 150 have been killed by Israeli forces and more than 10,000 have been wounded - over half by live fire, Lynk’s statement explained. Some are now left with devastating and life-long injuries.
“The killing and wounding of demonstrators, in the absence of any strictly-measured justification, and within the context of occupation, may amount to willful killing, which is both a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime,” he warned.
“It is also a serious violation of international human rights law and its protections for the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”
He hoped that the independent and international Commission of Inquiry, launched in May by the Human Rights Council, will be able to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the deaths and injuries in Gaza over the past six months.
