JERUSALEM // Israeli forces killed 27 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2013, a human rights watchdog has said, three times the figure recorded last year.
It was also the first time in 10 years that more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in 2013, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said.
Three Israeli security forces personnel were killed — two in the West Bank and one in Gaza.
B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli slammed the Israeli army’s “lack of seriousness” in investigating the incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli troops.
The army has only once indicted and convicted a soldier in some 28 separate incidents that have killed 35 Palestinians in the last two-and-a-half years, B’Tselem said.
“Investigations are now launched almost automatically,” said the B’Tselem director, Jessica Montell.
“Yet the essence of the investigative mechanism remains unchanged... in which practically no one is held accountable for the killing of Palestinians.”
* Agence France-Presse