Israel 'buried evidence at Jenin': Amnesty

A British expert sent to investigate allegations of a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp has accused Israel of burying evidence about what happened during the military offensive in the camp.

Professor Derrick Pounder, who was part of an Amnesty International delegation sent to investigate alleged human rights abuses, said he found evidence of arbitrary killings.

The delegation also included Kathleen Cavanagh from the law department at University College Galway and Javier Zuniga, Amnesty’s director of regional strategy.

Prof Pounder also suggested that the lack of bodies signals the possibility of a mass killing.

"What was striking was what was absent," he said.

"There were very few bodies in the hospital. There were also none who were seriously injured, only the walking wounded. Thus we have to ask: Where are the bodies and where are the seriously injured?"

Mr Pounder, head of forensic medicine in Dundee University, described the smell of rotting corpses underneath the rubble in Jenin and accused Israel of "literally burying the evidence" of what happened.

He spent two days visiting Jenin and its environs after a three-week Israeli offensive reduced the centre of the city’s refugee camp to a mound of rubble.

The delegation travelled to the Jenin camp after Palestinians accused Israel of conducting a massacre and bulldozing houses on top of innocent civilians, including women and children.