TEL AVIV, Nov 14: The Israeli army used Palestinians as human shields during an operation targeting an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank town of Jenin last week, an Israeli human rights group charged in a report on Thursday.

B’Tselem lists a number of cases of the use of “human shields” and the so-called “neighbour procedure” of forcing civilians to act as go-betweens with militants, condemning them as violations of international law and of an Aug 18 supreme court interim ban on both practices.

The report quotes witnesses describing how the army used a Palestinian civilian as a human shield on Nov 9 in Jenin, during an operation aimed at eliminating local Islamic Jihad chief Iyad Sawalha.

The report says Khaled Kamil, whose house was near Sawalha’s, was questioned about his neighbour by soldiers and ordered to go to the Hamas leader’s house.

The troops threatened to destroy Kamil’s house if he refused and after blowing up a wall which revealed a gaping hole leading into the wanted man’s house, the soldiers forced Kamil — at gunpoint — to go inside and call Sawalha.

The suspected militant was killed in the operation.

B’Tselem, the Israeli information centre for human rights in the occupied territories, recommends in its report that the army give an unambiguous order to its soldiers “not to demand civilians to perform military assignments”.—AFP