A internal probe Monday into Israel's targeted killing of a Hamas leader in Gaza nine years ago found that the victim was a "legitimate" target - but the results of the strike had been "disproportionate", dpa reported.
An Israeli commission of inquiry submitted its findings to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the 2002 incident in which Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the central Gaza City house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, a senior leader in the radical Islamist movement now ruling Gaza and the head of its operational branch.
Shehadeh was killed, but so were his wife, his 15-year-old daughter and 13 other innocent civilians who were in neighbouring apartments when the bomb was dropped shortly before midnight on July 22, 2002.
Some 150 neighbouring Palestinians were also injured in Gaza City's densely-populated al-Daraj neighbourhood.
The commission, headed by retired supreme court justice Tova Strasberg-Cohen, blamed an "intelligence failure" for the large number of civilian casualties.
Their presence in structures adjacent to Shehadeh's apartment had not been noted by Israeli intelligence and the officials involved in planning the targeted airstrike would have aborted it had they known, said the report.
The strike came amid a wave of suicide bombings launched by Hamas in Israeli cities, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel, which erupted two years earlier amid a deadlock in peace negotiations.
"An examination of the operation according to the rules of Israeli and international law unequivocally removes any suspicion that a criminal offence was committed by any of those involved in the operation," said the commission's report, a unclassified summary of which was sent to journalists Monday. The report was handed to Netanyahu Sunday.
"Despite the outcome which resulted in this instance, the means of targeted killing was and continues to be a lawful tool in the war against deadly terrorism," concluded the report.
The commission recommended no legal sanction against any of the decision-makers.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), however, said the targeted strike classified as a war crime and a crime against humanity.
It said that in addition to Shehadeh's home, eight other adjoining and nearby apartment buildings were completely destroyed, nine were partially destroyed, and another 21 sustained other damage.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, called the results of the Israeli commission "an official sponsorship of terrorism."
"The acquittal of the Israeli occupation perpetrators, who killed innocent civilians, is an insolent decision which hurts the feelings of the Palestinian people and an official encouragement to commit more crimes and practise terrorism," he said in a statement.
Another Gaza-based rights group, al-Dameer, demanded an independent international probe.
Israel has a conflict of interest in judging itself, its director, Khalil Abu Shamallah, told the German Press-Agency dpa Monday.
"It can't be the criminal and the prosecutor," he said.