File Photo: IDF troops on the ground in the Gaza Strip. AFP
The newspaper interviewed 16 Israeli soldiers and officials who knew about the practice, as well as three Palestinians, on the record, who were forced to take part in it.
It said that at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza had coerced Palestinian civilians into tasks such as searching for explosives or scouting inside tunnels, protecting Israeli soldiers.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the report "incredibly disturbing," the AFP reported.
"If the facts as presented in that report are true, they're completely unacceptable," he said.
"There can be no justification ever for the use of civilians as human shields. It would be a violation not just of international humanitarian law, but of the IDF's own code of conduct," he said, referring to the Israel army, AFP said.
He noted an Israeli investigation but said: "Even more than investigate, if they do find violations, people need to be held accountable, and they need to take steps to ensure that these practices are not repeated."
The New York Times quoted one teenager, then 17, who said that Israeli soldiers took him from his family and forced him to walk handcuffed ahead of them to search for explosives -- before being released without charge.
Another investigation by Israel’s Haaretz revealed that Gaza’s civilians are being detained and sent as human shields to search tunnels and houses before Israeli occupation soldiers enter, with senior Israeli officers fully aware of that.
"Our lives are more important than their lives," many Israeli combat soldiers and commanders told Haaretz.
In a horrific description of the Palestinians randomly kidnapped by Israeli forces in Gaza to serve as human shields for soldiers during operations, Haaretz said they are usually wearing Israeli army uniforms; many of them are in their 20s; and they are always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks.
The same practice is used by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. In at least one incident, the Israeli occupation troops tied a wounded Palestinian man to a military jeep using him as a human shield during a raid in the city of Jenin.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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