“The
High Commissioner considers that all violations of international
humanitarian law and human rights law must be investigated,” Arbour
said in a statement carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Those
responsible for breaches -- including deliberate targeting of
civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of
injured persons and the use of human shields -- must be brought to
justice, be they members of the Multinational Force or insurgents,”
she added.
The
Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Tuesday
joined a growing chorus of concern over the shocking crime.
Article
three of the Geneva Conventions “clearly bans any attack against a
person who is not taking part, or is no longer taking part, in
hostilities, that includes those wounded, taken prisoner or a
civilian,” ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari spelt out.
Unprotected
Civilians
 |
|
“Each time there are claims of or proof of violations, it’s deeply damaging,” Rasmussen said.
|
Human
rights watchdog Amnesty International said Monday, November 15, it was
deeply concerned the rules of war designed to protect civilians and
combatants have been violated in Fallujah.
“Amnesty
International fears that civilians have been killed, in contravention
of international humanitarian law, as a result of failure by parties
to the fighting to take necessary precautions to protect
non-combatants,” the London-based group said in a report on its
website.
“We
are not getting the full picture of what is going on in Fallujah,”
Amnesty spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry told AFP Monday.
“Some
clarification needs to be made, not only to Amnesty but to the whole
world because no one has a clear picture of what is going on.”
International
law experts in the Middle East have also expressed fury at the
incident, widely condemned as a flagrant violation on Geneva
Convention on the treatment of war prisoners.
“But
Washington had already taken precautions against trying its soldiers
before the International Court of Justice by signing bilateral
relations with the Iraqi Governing Council it had installed to avoid
paying for war crimes,” head of International Law Dept. at Cairo
University , professor Salah Amer, told Al-Jazeera TV.
Deplored
Danish
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a US ally in the Iraq war,
Tuesday deplored the crime at the Fallujah mosque.
Speaking
on Danish television TV2, Rasmussen said the incident could only
damage the US-led coalition in Iraq, of which Denmark is a member.
“Each
time there are claims of or proof of violations, it’s deeply
damaging. The international coalition is there to establish democracy
and respect for human rights,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen,
however, told Danish news agency Ritzau that he had “full confidence
in the American authorities to carry out an inquiry ... and pursue by
legal means those responsible.”
The
Iraqi Red Crescent appealed Sunday, November 14, for the United
Nations to help its convoys reach local citizens after the US military
had denied them access to the war-battered city.
An
eyewitness, who escaped the hell in Fallujah, told IslamOnline.net
Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the
western Iraqi city were “deliberately”
crushed by US tanks.
The
shocking scene in the Fallujah mosque comes, in effect, as a grim
reminder of the
Abu Ghraib scandal, which erupted last spring showing
photos of smiling US soldiers sexually abusing and torturing Iraqi
prisoners.
Abu
Gharib prison has put the US administration in an unenviable situation
and generated a worldwide wave of revulsion that raised questions
about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and
the
notorious US Guantanamo prison in Cuba.
