Taking the time to avoid death

The accusations just keep on coming:

An international human rights group on Tuesday accused the Israel Defense Forces of failing on six occasions to verify the targets of drone aircraft during the Gaza conflict in January, killing at least 29 Palestinian civilians.

The report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) states that in the six incidents in question, “Israeli forces either failed to take all feasible precautions to verify that the targets were combatants, apparently setting an unacceptably low threshold for conducting attacks, or they failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to target only the former. As a result, these attacks violated international humanitarian law (the laws of war).”

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with HRW, charged that drone operators had fired before making sure their targets were actual threats, calling drones the most precise weapons available.

“We should not find so many civilian casualties from these incidents,” he said.

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