By KUNA,
London : Violence pursued particularly in Iraq and Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the brunt continued to fall on civilians taking no part in conflict, according to the 2008 annual report of Amnesty International released on Wednesday.
The report, entitled “The State of the Worlds Human Rights,” noted in its Middle East and North Africa section, that in early May a confrontation in Lebanon between Hezbollah-led groups and the pro-government forces caused the death of at least 62 people, including four civilians.
On Iraq, the human rights group said the level of sectarian and other killings fell below previous peaks but remained high.
The survey also pointed out that there was no significant improvement in the lives of Iraqi people on the ground.
Armed groups opposed to the government and the presence of the US-led multi-national force continued to carry out bombings and other attacks, including in heavily populated areas, it said.
In March and April of this year, hundreds of people, including unarmed civilians, were killed in clashes between Iraqi government forces, operating with US support, and the Mahdi Army, Amnesty went on.
Turning to Israel and the Occupied Territories, the organisation warned that more than 330 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, and including young children, were killed in Israeli attacks, mostly in the Gaza Strip, in the first four months of 2008.
In the same period, 14 Israeli civilians and nine soldiers were killed in attacks by Palestinian armed groups, who fired rockets into southern Israel, the group added.
It also highlighted that despite US-led efforts to achieve a resolution of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following talks at Annapolis in November 2007, the Israeli authorities continued to build the 700 kilometre wall to expand illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, more than 500 military roadblocks continued to restrict or impede the movement of Palestinians between towns and villages throughout the West Bank.
Furthermore, the report cautioned that the continuing Israeli blocade of the Gaza Strip had an “increasingly disastrous impact” on the one-and-a-half million people who live there.
The UN reported in April 2008 that more than 80 percent of Gazas population had become dependent on emergency food aid, and the economy was “in ruins,” the document said.
Turning to the whole Middle East, Amnesty said that some governments there continue to exploit heightened insecurity “engendered by the War on Terror to clamp down on opposition, using secret, long-term and incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and trials before unfair courts.” Although thousands of detainees held by the US-led multi-national force in Iraq were released, more than 20,000 continue to be held, most without charge or trial.
Referring to Iran, the organisation said that the elections of the parliament last March were marked by the defeat of many reformists and other potential candidates by the powerful, clerically dominated Council of Guardians.
The elections were held against a background of continuing widespread human rights violations, including arrests, detentions and torture, or other ill-treatments of political activists, Amnesty said.