ISRAEL stood accused yesterday of deliberately blocking investigators trying to probe alleged war crimes during its 43-day assault on the embattled Gaza Strip.

NGOs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the authorities in Tel Aviv for barring researchers from the seven by 31-mile sliver of land where 1.8 million people have been trapped in a weeks-long reign of terror.

HRW said it had officially been refused because it wasn’t on a registered list of organisations allowed in.

But that hadn’t prevented access in the past, it said.

Amnesty International’s Anne FitzGerald accused Israel of “playing bureaucratic games.”

“The victims’ and the public’s right to know about what happened during the hostilities requires the Israeli authorities to ensure full transparency about their actions and to refrain from hindering independent and impartial research into all alleged violations,” she said.

The two NGOs said they had tried repeatedly to enter the Strip to probe possible breaches of international law by thousands of well-equipped Israeli troops and by Islamist militia group Hamas, whose crude missiles have killed three Israeli civilians since July 8.

But in a symptom of the total control Tel Aviv wields over access to the Strip its officials have so far refused entry.

Egyptian authorities have similarly blocked access via Gaza’s southern border.

HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson echoed Ms FitzGerald’s anger.

“If Israel is confident in its claim that Hamas is responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza, why is it blocking human rights organisations from carrying out on-site investigations?” she asked.

“Talking points by a party to the conflict don’t determine whether attacks violated the laws of war, but field investigations could.”

The sound of explosions again echoed around Gaza City yesterday as billowing black smoke signalled the latest victims of an air strike.

Cairo truce talks broke down on Tuesday when an Israeli delegation walked out after 10 low-tech rockets were fired at their country from Gaza in what Tel Aviv branded a breach of a ceasefire.

That signalled a fresh round of bloody attacks by Israel whose warplanes slaughtered a heavily pregnant woman and several children yesterday.

Dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza but there were no Israeli casualties.

Tel Aviv’s relentless land, sea and air assault has already left 2,100 Palestinians dead.

Gazan health authorities said 80 per cent of those killed in the onslaught were civilians, more than a third of them women and children.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee from their homes.

Israel also stands accused of deadly and deliberate attacks on United Nations schools sheltering hundreds of refugees and of targeting civilian areas with flachette shells whose lethal metal darts are designed to shred human flesh.