Tutu Visits Palestine for Fact Finding Over 2006 Killings

27 May 2008

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Tuesday held talks with Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip where he led a UN fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinian civilians in an 2006 Israeli artillery attack.

Sources close to Tutu's delegation said the Anglican former archbishop of Cape Town planned to call during the talks for an end of rocket attacks on Israel, and stress that all attacks against civilians -- whether against Palestinians or against Israelis -- should be condemned.

Other sources stressed, that the only attacks by rocket fire are by Mahmoud Abbas’s terrorist organization and the necessity for this to stop is important.

On Wednesday, the team led by Tutu was due to visit Beit Hanun, where the 2006 killings occurred, to interview witnesses and survivors of the attack.

They will prepare a report to present to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN officials said.

The Israeli raid on Beit Hanun on November 8, 2006, was widely condemned by the international community for killing 19 civilians, including five women and eight children, in their homes.

In February, the Israeli army announced that no charges would be brought against Israeli soldiers over the attack. After conducting an internal investigation, Israel concluded that the bombing of the civilians' homes was "a rare and grave technical error of the artillery radar system."

The army said it had been aiming its artillery at an area from which Palestinian militants were firing rockets at Israel, but due to the technical problem, the shells instead hit two homes.

The UN Human Rights Council had decided to send a team to Gaza to investigate the killings in 2006, but Israel refused to grant visas.

Tutu circumvented Israeli restrictions by driving to the Palestinian territory through Egypt on Tuesday.