Israel's chief military prosecutor ordered eight new criminal probes into the army's operations during summer's war in the Gaza Strip, the military announced Sunday.

The probes will examine "exceptional incidents" related to the 50-day campaign in the coastal enclave and are pursuant to five criminal investigations launched in September, Military Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Dan Efroni, said in a statement issued late Saturday night.

Some 100 complaints have been referred to the military prosecutor's office by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights NGOs during the war and in its aftermath, of which 85 are currently under various stages of review by fact-finding investigative teams. Nine cases were closed due to insufficient evidence, the statement said.

The newly announced investigations into suspicions of criminal wrongdoing involve an air strike on the Abu Jama family home on July 20, in which 27 people were killed, among them 19 minors and two women, and the deaths of two ambulance drivers in two separate incidents that occurred near a hospital in Beit Hanun and in the Khan Yunis area on July 25.

Other probes launched by the military, details of which were disclosed in the statement for the first time, were examining the alleged killing of Mohammed Mohammed Kadiach by an Israeli force while he was holding a white flag and the use of one of his relatives as a human shield, and the suspected theft of property from four different Gaza homes in Khan Yunis and Hazia in mid-July.

Among the closed cases, one involved a July 29 strike on a UNSCO office in which the structure and an armored car were damaged.

Other incidents that did not warrant investigations involved multiple Israeli strikes on the Al-Wafa Hospital during the course of two weeks in July, which the Israeli army said was used by Hamas for military purposes, and July 28 strikes on the Shifa Hospital and a nearby park in which 10 Palestinians were killed, after it was concluded that their deaths were caused by either Hamas or Islamic Jihad rocket fire.

Over 2,000 Palestinians, about half of them civilians according to Israeli estimates, were killed in 50 days of hostilities. 73 Israelis, 67 soldiers and the rest civilians, were killed in the Gaza war.

The internal investigations of the army's operations in Gaza could help Israel square off against a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry into possible war crimes committed by its forces over the summer.

Israel has previously accused the council of being biased and said Hamas, which targeted the Israeli home front with thousands of rockets fired from residential area in Gaza, including from schools, hospitals, mosques and play grounds, is responsible for Palestinian civilian casualties.

In an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper after the war, UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon said that the world body also intends to probe Israel's targeting of its schools in Gaza, which were housing displaced Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes during the war.

The UN had acknowledged, however, that weapons had been stored by militants in at least three of its schools. Ban said at the time that he was "shocked and appalled" by the discovery.

No decision has yet been made on whether to open a criminal investigation into a major incident on August 1 in which heavy shelling was employed as part of a so-called "Hannibal Procedure" to pursue Hamas fighters who the Israeli military believed had kidnapped one of its soldiers in southern Rafah and which killed more than 100 Palestinians, according to the statement.

In a September statement, the chief military prosecutor's office said it was being assisted by six teams of reserve officers whom it described as "experts in various military fields" who underwent legal training courses.

"The increased role of the army's investigative and legal bodies is a reflection of the growing importance of international and national laws in modern combat," the Jerusalem Post quoted a military source as saying at the time. Endit

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