GENEVA - The UN Human Rights Council voted Friday to send a team of international war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces.

The UN’s top human rights body voted through a resolution calling on the council to “urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry” - the UN rights council’s highest-level of investigation.

Only two of the council’s 47 members, the United States and Australia, voted against the resolution, while 29 voted in favour and 14 abstained, including Britain, Switzerland and Germany.

The text said the team should investigate all alleged violations and abuses... in the context of the military assaults on large scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018, ... including those that may amount to war crimes.”

The special UN session comes after six weeks of mass protests and clashes along the Gaza border with Palestinian refugees demanding the right to return to their former homes inside what is now Israel.

The violence has claimed more than 100 Gazan lives, with 60 Palestinians killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests that coincided with Monday’s move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The council was considering a draft resolution calling for the urgent dispatch of “an independent, international commission of inquiry” - the UN rights council’s highest-level of investigation.

The draft resolution, which was presented by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and backed by 47 UN member states, said investigators should probe “all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law ... in the context of the military assaults on large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018”.

Opening the special session earlier Friday, UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein slammed the “wholly disproportionate” use of force by Israeli troops and backed the call for an international probe. “Nobody has been made safer by the horrific events of the past week,” he said.

But Zeid insisted that many of those injured and killed on Monday “were completely unarmed, (and) were shot in the back, in the chest, in the head and limbs with live ammunition”, he said, saying there was “little evidence of any (Israeli) attempt to minimise casualties”.

He said, “some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used slingshots to throw stones, flew burning kites into Israel and attempted to use wire-cutters against the two fences between Gaza and Israel.”

But he added: “these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force.”

Israel has justified its actions, arguing it was necessary to stop mass infiltrations from the blockaded Palestinian enclave which is run by the Islamist Hamas movement.

Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aviva Raz Shechter, meanwhile slammed what she called a “shameful” and “biased” resolution.

“Hamas is the aggressor. Hamas is the one committing war crimes,” she said, insisting that with Friday’s resolution, the Human Rights Council “has reached a new height of hypocrisy”.

“This resolution is void of any sense, and deserves nothing less than being torn apart.”

US representative Theodore Allegra also lamented the council’s “biased focus on Israel”, charging that the resolution had a “one-sided focus, without any call for investigation of Hamas”.

Kuwait has circulated to members of the UN Security Council a draft resolution calling for the dispatch of an “international protection mission” to shield Palestinian civilians, according to a copy obtained by AFP on Friday.

The draft “calls for measures to be taken to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilian population” and for “the dispatch of an international protection mission.”

No details were offered on what form such a mission might take, or whether they would be made up of UN peacekeepers or observers.

The draft calls on the UN secretary-general to submit a report within 30 days of any adoption of the resolution on his recommendations “on ways and means for ensuring the safety, protection and well-being” of Palestinian civilians.

Kuwait, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, circulated the draft after Israel killed 60 Palestinians during protests on the Gaza border Monday as the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The text risks being vetoed by the United States. Earlier this week, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, vigorously defended Israel’s “restraint” in responding to the protests.

A first meeting to discuss the text has been set for Monday afternoon, said one diplomatic source on condition of anonymity, predicting there was “no chance” the text would be passed and that Washington would refuse even to discuss it.

The draft condemns Israel’s use of live ammunition against protesters, reaffirms the right to peaceful protest and calls for “independent, impartial and transparent investigations” into the deadly violence.

The draft also calls for “the full lifting of the blockade and the restrictions imposed by Israel” on access in and out of Gaza and for unhindered flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, slammed the resolution as “shameful” and said it was designed to assist Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, whom the Jewish state considers a terrorist organization.

“This shameful draft resolution is a proposal to support Hamas’ war crimes against Israel and the residents of Gaza who are being sent to die for the sake of preserving Hamas’ rule,” he said in a statement.

Tens of thousands pray at Al-Aqsa on first Friday of Ramadan

Tens of thousands of Palestinians prayed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem Friday, the first weekly prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Around 120,000 people attended the Friday prayers, a spokesman for the religious authority that governs the mosque told AFP.

Heavily armed Israeli police stood guard in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site for Muslims, after two others in Saudi Arabia.

It is located in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank were allowed to enter Jerusalem for the prayers, passing through checkpoints where they underwent searches.

There were no restrictions on women crossing into Jerusalem, but men under 40 were prevented from crossing by Israel, which normally cites security concerns.

Friday prayers passed peacefully at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, while outside the compound heavily armed police officers were deployed in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.