BERLIN: Human rights lawyers filed a lawsuit against an Israeli soldier of German origin over suspected involvement in the targeted killing of unarmed Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and three Palestinian human rights organizations said they filed a criminal complaint with Germany’s federal prosecutor against a sniper in the Israeli Defense Forces.
ECCHR said the 25-year-old soldier was born and raised in Munich and had a registered residence in Germany until recently, but could not confirm that the man had dual citizenship.
In a 130-page complaint, ECCHR said the groups submitted evidence, including investigative research and audiovisual recordings, alleging that the soldier belonged to the so-called “Ghost Unit” of the 202nd Paratroopers Battalion.
The ECCHR statement said its evidence indicated that members of the unit deliberately killed civilians in Gaza.
The Israeli military and foreign ministry and Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The human rights groups said targeted sniper shootings were documented near Gaza’s Al Quds and Nasser hospitals between November 2023 and March 2024, adding that legal proceedings against members of the same unit were also underway in France, Italy, South Africa and Belgium.
The case was filed under German laws that allow prosecutors to pursue international crimes if the accused persons were born in Germany or German nationals, ECCHR said.
“There must be no double standards – even if the suspects are members of the Israeli armed forces,” ECCHR’s lawyer Alexander Schwarz said in a statement.
Rights groups file case in Germany against German-Israeli soldier over suspected Gaza war crimes
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Rights groups file case in Germany against German-Israeli soldier over suspected Gaza war crimes
- The human rights groups said targeted sniper shootings were documented near Gaza’s Al Quds and Nasser hospitals between November 2023 and March 2024
Landmine explosion in Sudan kills 9, including 3 children
- “Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said
KHARTOUM: A land mine explosion killed nine people in Sudan on Sunday, including three children, as they were riding in an auto-rickshaw along a road in the frontline region of Kordofan, a medical source told AFP.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
