[ 03/05/2011 - 12:00 PM ] AMMAN, (PIC)-- Israel directly killed more than 1,300 Palestinian children since the onset of the millennium, a UN official said in a new report.
They shot those children dead those children during direct military operations, said Richard Falk, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
He said seventeen Palestinian children were killed in 2010 alone while trying to gather gravel to help rebuild their families' homes destroyed during the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. Israel has prohibited the entry of building materials during its blockade of the tiny enclave.
Quds Press quote Falk as saying during a press conference he held in the Jordanian capital Amman on Monday that Israel has some 226 Palestinian children detained in its prisons, held without specific charges.
Falk, who Israel has banned from entry into the Palestinian territories, said that the continued Gaza siege and escalation of Israeli abuses has led to major deterioration in the human rights situation of the children's mental and physical health in the Strip.
He called on the UN to exert efforts to force Israel to bind by international laws.
He said that he holds that contradiction in Israel's application of international law signals systematic racial discrimination against the Palestinians.
Uprooted Palestinian