Amnesty International said yesterday that Israel inflicted "wanton destruction" in the Gaza Strip in attacks that often targeted Palestinian civilians during an offensive in December and January in the Hamas-run enclave.
In a 117-page report on the 22 days of fighting, the London-based rights group also criticised the Islamist movement Hamas for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called "war crimes".
Among other conclusions, Amnesty said it had found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza guerillas deliberately used civilians as "human shields", but it did cite evidence that Israeli troops put children and other civilians in harm's way by forcing them to remain in homes taken over by soldiers.
Amnesty International said some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Israel's Operation Cast Lead, including 300 children and hundreds of innocent civilians, a figure broadly in line with those from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza and the independent Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The Israeli military put the Palestinian death toll at 1,166, of whom 295 were civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians, during the offensive that Israel launched with the declared aim of curtailing cross-border rocket attacks.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that in the Amnesty report, "things presented as facts are untrue and have no connection to reality".
"The report is tendentious and completely ignores the fact that for eight years Hamas carried out terror and crime against the residents of Israel," he said in a statement.
Accusing Israel of "breaching laws of war", Amnesty said: "Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity."
Commenting on Amnesty's allegations, the Israeli military said it operated in accordance with international law. It said the report ignored "efforts made by the Israel Defence Forces to minimise, as much as possible, harm to non-combatants".
"In many cases, the IDF exercised measures of caution, including warning the civilian population before an attack," the military said. "The IDF directed its attack only against military targets."