Israelis 'did not violate law'
The Israeli military said it did not violate international law during the Gaza war, bluntly deflecting war crimes allegations by human rights groups.
Rights activists renewed their call for an independent inquiry, saying the military was "incapable" of looking at "the whole range of violations."
In Norway, a group of lawyers filed a complaint accusing 10 Israelis, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, of war crimes.
Norway's chief prosecutor, Siri Frigaard, said she will now determine whether there are grounds for charges or a police investigation.
Israel launched its three-week offensive on December 27 to try to halt daily rocket attacks from Gaza that had terrorised southern Israel for years and brought one-eighth of its population within rocket range.
The use of air and ground power against Hamas, which overran Gaza in June 2007, was unprecedented in Israel's war against Palestinian militants, who operated from within residential areas.
Palestinians say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, including more than 900 civilians.
However Israel's deputy military chief of staff, Brigadier General Dan Harel, gave a lower figure at a briefing for reporters in Tel Aviv. He said 1,166 Palestinians were killed, including 709 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. Harel said 295 of the dead were civilians and the identity of an additional 162 could not be confirmed.
The military conducted five separate investigations into some of its most controversial actions during the war, including attacks on and near UN and international facilities, shooting at medical workers and hospitals and facilities and the use in densely populated Gaza of white phosphorus, a chemical agent that causes horrific burns.
The investigations uncovered "a very small number of incidents" in which intelligence or operational errors took place during the fighting, the military said.
