Human Rights Watch
'During the recent fighting in Gaza from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed dozens of Palestinian civilians with one of the most precise weapons in its arsenal: missiles launched from an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV)-the latter more commonly known as a drone... Alongside weapons that affect large areas, such as high explosive artillery and artillery-fired white phosphorous, Israeli forces in Gaza used drones in precisely targeted attacks that killed and wounded civilians...
This report focuses on six Israeli drone strikes, which in total killed 29 civilians, eight of them children... determined that in all of these attacks the Israeli military directed their strikes on individuals who were all found to be civilians. In none of the cases did Human Rights Watch find evidence that Palestinian fighters were present in the immediate area of the attack at the time. None of the targets were moving quickly or leaving the area, so the drone operators would have had time to determine whether they were observing civilians or combatants, and to hold fire if they were not able to tell the difference...
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