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HAMAS rejected a United Nations report released yesterday that found both Israel and Palestinian militant groups may have committed war crimes during Operation Protective Edge last summer in the Gaza Strip.

While Gaza’s rulers rejected that its own fighters were to blame for war crimes, it welcomed the report’s condemnation of Israel.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said yesterday that its rockets and mortars were aimed at Israeli military sites, not at civilians. Hamad criticised the UN investigators for what he said was a false balance between victims and killers.

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said the organisation “welcomes the report’s condemnation of the Zionist occupier for its war crimes during the last war against Gaza.”

In an official statement issued by Hamas, the organisation said that “This clear condemnation of Israel obligates bringing its leaders to the International Criminal Court and other international courts and put them on trial for the crimes they committed against our people. We stress it’s important to set boundaries to Israel and stop the siege and the continuous Zionist aggression against our people and our land.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry also condemned the report’s findings, saying the UN Human Rights Council was “a notoriously biased institution” that “has a singular obsession with Israel.”

More than 2,200 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed during the fighting, according to UN and Palestinian officials, while 73 people, including six civilians, died on the Israeli side. — AFP-AP.