Israeli protestors throw stones at UN commissioner's convoy

SDEROT, Israel (AFP) - Israelis have thrown stones at the car of the UN high commissioner for human rights at the site of a Palestinian rocket attack near the town of Sderot, where one man was seriously wounded.

As commissioner Louise Arbour arrived in the town Tuesday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded in an adjacent industrial zone, seriously wounding a man and causing a fire that sent plumes of black smoke into the sky, a police source said.

Arbour went to visit the scene of the latest Palestinian attack but as she left workers stoned her convoy in protest, shouting angrily and striking her car but not causing any casualties, said an AFP correspondent.

She later sat for two hours with Sderot residents, listening to their descriptions of life on the frontline of Palestinian rocket attacks.

The commissioner, who on Monday visited the site of a deadly botched Israeli shelling in the Gaza town of Beit Hanun, also heavily damaged by an incursion, said protecting civilians in the entire region was "an absolutely critical issue".

"I saw people in Beit Hanun, civilians, mothers who lost their children, who feel... terribly exposed, terribly vulnerable, extremely afraid, very abandoned and I have a sense there is the same thing here," she said.

She called on Israel to look for "partnership" to build a sustainable atmosphere for peace, even as troops staged an incursion into a neighbourhood of Gaza City, leaving two Palestinians dead -- a militant and an elderly woman.

"Israel has responsibility for its citizens by legal means, in respect of international law, including international humanitarian law," Arbour told reporters after visiting the site of the latest rocket attack in Sderot.

"It has to look for support and partnership to build an atmosphere where peace would be sustainable. I think other measures are very short term."

Sderot has borne the brunt of Palestinian rocket attacks, particularly since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 following a 38-year occupation.

A UN spokesman playd down the incident and denied any question of the high commissioner being chased out of town by stone throwers.

"Any suggestion that she was hounded out of town by stone throwing mobs is absurd. We left the site of the (rocket) impact and spent two hours talking to the residents of Sderot about their experiences," Christopher Gunness said.

"I later discovered that there was something thrown at her car," he added.

A total of six people have been killed from rocket attacks on Sderot since the second Palestinian uprising broke out in September 2000.

Arbour's visit to the region comes after the UN Human Rights Council voted last Wednesday to send an urgent fact-finding mission to Beit Hanun to examine the impact of Israel's attack on Palestinian homes.

More than 300 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched operations in the territory in late June in a bid to recover a soldier seized by militants and to halt persistent rocket attacks.

Source

About headlines and content that has changed after it was added to this site - see disclaimer here

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.