OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, September 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Israeli army's prosecutor rejected Wednesday, September 25, a request by a pacifist group to investigate the air force chief who ordered a bombing in a densely populated area in Gaza, that killed at least 17 people, including eleven children.

Left-wing group Gush Shalom appealed to the chief military prosecutor to open an investigation into Major General Dan Halutz, who authorized the use of a one-tone bomb to liquidate top Hamas leader Salah Shehade, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

On the night of July 22, a U.S.-made F-16 warplane dropped the huge bomb in a densely populated area of Gaza City, killing Shehade, his bodyguard, and 15 civilians, 11 of them children.

Media reports quoted Halutz as defending the bombing, saying it was both "militarily and morally" proper. He said a smaller bomb might not have hit its target.

Gush Shalom asked for an investigation, calling the attack a war crime, Israel army radio reported.

In denying the request, the prosecutor said in a letter of reply that there was no place to open an investigation into Halutz, the radio said.

Gush Shalom slammed the reply as "playing innocent and evasion."

Six weeks ago, far-right Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered an investigation into Gush Shalom for threatening to file war crime charges against reserve officers serving in the occupied territories.

Sharon told Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein to start an enquiry into the group for sending letters to 15 reserve officers and threatening legal action against them to the Hague's International Criminal Court (ICC), the radio said.

Over the past few months, Gush Shalom sent letters to army officers on duty in the occupied Palestinian territories accusing them of war crimes and warning the group was watching them and compiling files to send to the ICC.

Meanwhile, a Kuwait-based group announced Wednesday, September 25, a campaign to gather one million signatures to ask the international community to try Sharon for war crimes.

"We will announce the start of the campaign tonight," Anwar al-Rushaid, executive director of the Popular Congress for Resistance to Normalization with Israel in the Gulf, told AFP.

The group is giving itself until the end of December to gather the million signatures from all over the Arab world, Rushaid said.

It will then send the petition to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as well as the heads of state of all five permanent Security Council members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

The group is seeking the trial of Sharon in an international court for war crimes, including the violation of human rights in the Palestinian territories during a deadly offensive in the West Bank in April, said Rushaid.

"We want to ask the U.N. to help in punishing Sharon, and we want more protection for the Palestinians," he said.

"If we can collect one million signatures, it's something no one has ever done before," he added.

Kuwait, like most other Gulf Arab states, has ruled out ties with Israel before a comprehensive and lasting peace settlement is reached with all Arab countries.

Liberal and Islamic opposition groups launched the congress in April 2000 in an expression of Gulf popular rejection of links with Israel.

Sharon was found to be responsible by both the Israeli government and the international community for the deaths of about two-thousand displaced civilians seeking shelter at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut in 1982.

The massacre was perpetrated by a Lebanese Christian militia, the Phalange, in collaboration with the Israeli army which controlled the area at a time when Sharon was defense minister. Sharon had overall command of forces in Beirut in 1982. He authorized the entry of Israel-backed Christian militias to refugee camps, where they initiated a killing spree that lasted for three days.

The BBC recently aired a documentary about Sharon's role in the 1982 atrocities. The documentary featured a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East suggesting that Sharon could be convicted of war crimes.