Report: Israel probes for war crimes over Gaza aid centre shootings

The Israeli military prosecutor's office is investigating whether war crimes may have been committed in connection with shots fired at Palestinians near aid centres in the Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported on Friday.

According to a Haaretz newspaper report, the General Staff investigation unit is to examine whether Israeli soldiers assigned to secure the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution sites may have violated international humanitarian law.

At least 410 Palestinians have been killed in the vicinity of the GHF's food distribution centres since the end of May, according to the UN.

In almost all cases, Israeli soldiers are said to have fired without provocation on unarmed crowds that had gathered in front of the centres before they opened.

The GHF is a foundation supported by Israel and the US but has been widely criticized abroad. It was proposed after Israel had for months blockaded aid deliveries into Gaza, saying this was to prevent the misuse of aid provided by the UN and other non-governmental organizations.

Israel said aid is stolen by Hamas, although evidence of such systematic theft is lacking.

The Haaretz report said according to soldiers and officers in Gaza, "the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites."

Soldiers fire on people to keep them away from the centres before they open, the report said. "It's a killing field," said a member of the army who had been there himself.

"They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars."

The GHF centres are run by private US security companies, with the surrounding area secured by Israeli units. These are classic combat troops who are not trained in crowd control.

"Our form of communication is gunfire," a soldier involved said of the way Palestinians seeking aid are treated.

Senior Israeli lawmakers responded with outrage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement calling the report a "malicious lie."

They said it only served to "defame the most moral army in the world."

The army earlier rejected accusations that it was shooting indiscriminately at Palestinians in the vicinity of GHF centres, arguing that in all these cases, the soldiers involved had been under threat.