The United Nations has tasked a five-member panel with investigating Israeli attacks on UN shelters during Tel Aviv’s deadly summer war on the Gaza Strip.
The panel was appointed on Monday by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has termed the three cases of Israel’s shelling of UN-run schools as a "moral outrage."
The inquiry will "review and investigate a number of specific incidents in which death or injuries occurred at, and/or damage was done to United Nations premises," said UN spokesman, Farhan Haq.
Israel has alleged that fighters with the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas were using the schools to store weapons. Tel Aviv has denied that it had deliberately targeted the schools, which were being used as shelters by Palestinians during the 50-day-long war.
The war on the Israel-blockaded enclave killed about 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left more than 11,000 others injured.
Earlier in the month, UK-based rights group, Amnesty International, said the Israeli military's killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during the aggression amounted to war crimes.
"It appears that the attacks directly and deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects, which would constitute war crimes," it said.
“Israeli forces have brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.
