U.N. report condemns Israel for Gaza operation

(CNN) -- Israeli soldiers routinely and intentionally put children in harm's way during their 22-day offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a United Nations report made public Monday.

The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations "too numerous to list."

For example, on January 15, in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians' packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives, the 43-page report said.

They then forced the boy to walk in front of them in the town, it said. When the soldiers came under fire, "the boy remained in front of the group," the report said.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister called the report another example of the "one-sided and unfair" attitude of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which requested it.

The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons -- both younger than 11 -- emerged to look at the damage.

"As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing," the report said.

In the second, it said, "Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together.

"The eldest son was shouting in vain the word 'Children' in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally."

Source article is here.