The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Sunday demanded an Israeli army inquiry into the death of a mother of six during an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip last week. "We have called on the Israeli army to carry out an impartial investigation for accountability and for the facts to speak for themselves," Chris Gunness, the spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told AFP.

Wafa Al-Daghma, 32, an UNRWA school teacher, was killed on Thursday during an Israeli army raid near her house in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis. "The IDF (Israeli army) detonated a device near the front door of the house and Wafa was killed in the explosion," Gunness said. "According to preliminary reports her completely destroyed head was blown off her body.

The Israeli army could not immediately comment on the incident. Daghma's husband and three of her children were out of the house when the soldiers arrived but her 16-year-old daughter Samira and two of her sons, both under the age of six, were at home. "Samira heard the explosion-she saw her mother fall to the ground, and she ran into her room with her two brothers to hide," Gunness said.

After the blast at 4:00 pm the soldiers occupied the house to use it as a lookout post and stayed until around 11:00 pm, as the children huddled in the dark without electricity, Gunness said. An Islamic Jihad fighter was killed and another 20 people, including 10 militants, were wounded in clashes in the area at around the same time, according to Palestinian medics.

There were gunshots but the children did not know where they came from," Gunness said. "Their cries and screams for their mother went unanswered by the soldiers." When the soldiers eventually left Samira emerged to find her mother's body and ran to fetch neighbors, who recovered it. Israel carries out frequent raids on the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement since last June, in a bid to halt rocket attacks on nearby Israeli communities.



UNRWA provides food aid and basic services to some 4.5 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, including an estimated one million refugees in Gaza, which has been under tight Israeli sanctions for 11 months.
The number of probes of Israeli soldiers suspected of committing offences against Palestinian civilians more than doubled last year compared to 2006, an Israeli human rights group said on Sunday. Last year 351 inquiries were opened against Israeli soldiers suspected of offending Palestinian civilians and their property in the occupied territories.

That figure compared with 152 probes in 2006, said a report by the Yesh Din rights group, based on figures from the criminal investigation division of Israel's military police. The offences include abuse, looting, illegal shooting and killing innocent people. The Tel Aviv-based rights group said while the number of inquiries increased in 2007 so did the failure rate. In 45 percent of cases the investigators could not identify the specific unit and soldiers suspected of the offence.

In 2006, the failure rate of investigations was about 22 percent. Since the launch of the Palestinian intifade, or uprising, in September 2000 up to April this year, there have been more than 1,000 cases of suspected criminal offences by Israeli soldiers. Only 140 investigations resulted in indictments. In 110 cases soldiers were found guilty of an offence, while in 20 cases the soldiers were acquitted or the prosecution withdrew the charges.

The remaining 10 cases have not yet been concluded. Yesh Din says the aim of its project was "to increase the transparency of law enforcement procedures." It was also "to make the information available in order to allow the public to assess - for the first time - whether and to what extent the IDF is fulfilling its duty to protect the civilian population that is not involved in the fighting," the report said.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF, or army) have occupied the West Bank and up until September 2005 the Gaza Strip. Yesh Din, founded in 2005, is comprised of volunteers opposed to the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories.

In its report the group also ranked Israeli military units to show those most often suspected of anti-Palestinian offences. In 2006-2007, the Kfir Brigade composed of six battalions deployed in the West Bank were implicated in 66 investigations, followed by the Paratroopers Brigade and its four battalions in 52 inquiries.