Israeli rights group says use of force excessive

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- An Israeli human rights group said on Friday an investigation into bloody clashes at a holy site in Jerusalem's Old City a week ago painted a "dismal picture" of an excessive use of force by Israeli police.

The B'Tselem rights group said an interim report of the events at the shrine known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount found that excessive force killed four Palestinians and wounded over 200.

"B'Tselem's investigation paints a dismal picture of the excessive use of force," the group said in a statement.

"The use of rubber bullets, while deliberately refraining from measures of lesser severity, such as tear gas and water jets, is especially grave and one of the main causes of the great number of people injured," it said.

The violence at the shrine was one of the first clashes after a visit by Israeli right-winger Ariel Sharon to the site a day earlier.

The battles spread during the week to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to Arab towns in Israel. At least 69 people, all but three of them Arabs, have been killed in the week of fighting.

The B'Tselem report was issued before Muslim prayers on Friday, declared by the Hamas militant group as a "Day of Rage."

Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said Jerusalem police met Palestinian officials and Muslim spiritual leaders last week to try to reduce tensions at the compound before Sharon's visit.

"The contention regarding the possibility of using water jets is ludicrous," he told B'Tselem in response to the report.

"Is it the duty of the police to place at the gates of the Temple Mount gigantic water containers and water jets to disperse masses of people, or maybe use helicopters containing water and paint?"

B'Tselem urged that an independent committee investigate the events at the religious shrine and that police formulate rules of conduct for dealing with riots.

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