Israeli killings :unprecedented

A United Nations investigator to the Palestinian territories said yesterday the number of Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israeli forces during a wave of violence over the past 20 days was "unprecedented".

Giorgio Giacomelli, an independent rapporteur mandated by the UN Commission on Human Rights to monitor the territories, also expressed concern about the Israeli settlers "paramilitaries" who were responsible for at least five Palestinian deaths in the West Bank.

The former Italian diplomat, who has also headed the UN refugee agency which cares for 3.7 million Palestine refugees scattered in the Middle East backed setting up a "mechanism for speedy and objective inquiry into the ongoing crisis".

The report on his Oct 11-15 mission which said Israeli killings of Palestinians exceeded the first four months of the 1987-88 Intifada, was issued to the UN human rights commission yesterday at a two-day special session in Geneva.

In some sense the high scale of this violation is unprecedented. It is worthy of note that the number of deaths caused by Israeli forces so far approximate the number killed in the first four months of the Intifada, in 1987-88," Giacomelli said in his seven-page report issued in Geneva.

Israeli forces "appear to have indiscriminately used excessive force in cases where there was no imminent threat to their lives", according to Giacomelli.

The report also said that about 40 per cent of an estimated 2,000 to 3,700 Palestinians, wounded by Israeli occupation forces, were under age 18 and that at least half of the injuries resulted from the use of live ammunition.