HUMAN Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the Israeli military of carrying out attacks that “apparently amount to war crimes” during the 11-day onslaught on Gaza in May.

The international human rights organisation issued its conclusions today after investigating three Israeli air strikes that killed 62 Palestinian civilians.

“Israeli forces carried out attacks in Gaza in May that devastated entire families without any apparent military target nearby,” HRW  director Gerry Simpson said.

The most serious attack, on May 16, involved a series of strikes on al-Wahda Street, a central thoroughfare in Gaza City.

The air strikes destroyed three apartment buildings and killed a total of 44 civilians, HRW said, including 18 children and 14 women. Twenty-two of the dead were members of a single family, the al-Kawlaks.

In this instance, HRW concluded that Israel had used US-made GBU-31 precision-guided bombs, and that it had not warned any of the residents to evacuate the area ahead of time.

The investigation also looked at a May 10 explosion that killed eight people, including six children, near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

Based on an analysis of munition remnants at the scene and witness accounts of the strike, HRW said evidence indicated the weapon used had been “a type of guided missile.”

The third attack HRW investigated occurred on May 15, in which an Israeli air strike destroyed a three-storey building in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp. Ten people were killed, including two women and eight children.

HRW investigators determined the building was hit by a US-made guided missile.

In all, 254 people were killed in Gaza during the conflict, including at least 67 children and 39 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Earlier this year, HRW accused Israel of being guilty of international crimes of apartheid and persecution because of its discriminatory polices towards Palestinians both inside Israel and in the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In its latest report, it called on the United States to condition its assistance with Israel on it taking “concrete and verifiable actions” to comply with international human rights law and to investigate past abuses.

The report also accused Palestinian militants of apparent war crimes in launching over 4,000 unguided rockets and mortars at Israeli population centres.

Such attacks, it said, violate “the prohibition against deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians.”

HRW said it will issue a separate report in August on the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, which killed 12 Israeli civilians, including two children, and a soldier during the conflict.