Fatah and Hamas committing “war crimes”
Gaza City (AsiaNews/HRW) – Armed Palestinian groups which have fought each other over the past three days in the Gaza Strip have committed what amounts to “war crimes,” Human Rights Watch said today. According to the humanitarian organisation both Fatah and Hamas militiamen have summarily executed prisoners, killed people not involved in hostilities, and engaged in gun battles with one another inside and near Palestinian hospitals.
On Sunday, Hamas forces captured Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City.
Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra’fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building.
On Monday, Hamas military forces attacked the home in Beit Lahiya of Jamal Abu al-Jadiyan, a senior Fatah official, captured and executed him on the street with multiple gunshots.
Gunfire wounded tens of people and armed men from both groups have stormed some hospitals forcing out staff and patients and turning the buildings into fortified redoubts as clashes continued inside and in nearby streets.
At a hospital in Beit Hanun shut down on Monday when five people were killed, including three family members with ties to Fatah, `Id al-Masri and his sons, Farij and Ibrahim.
After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building.
“These attacks by both Hamas and Fatah constitute brutal assaults on the most fundamental humanitarian principles,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “The murder of civilians not engaged in hostilities and the wilful killing of captives are war crimes, pure and simple.” Similarly, “using a vehicle with press markings to carry out a military attack is a serious violation of the laws of war,” said Whitson. This amounts to an act of perfidy.
On Saturday, four armed men from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade drove a white jeep bearing “TV” insignias to a fence on the Gaza-Israel border and fired at Israeli soldiers.
Customary international humanitarian law provides that journalists not taking direct part in hostilities in armed conflict zones “shall be considered as civilians.”
The Palestinian Journalists Union on Sunday criticised the use by armed factions of press insignia. In a statement it said that the “use of vehicles that carry ‘Press,’ ‘TV’ or other signs . . . exposes journalists’ lives to danger” because it might induce the other party to disregard journalists’ immunity.
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