UN expert investigating torture of Palestinian detainees

The UN's leading expert on torture has said she is investigating allegations of torture and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel.

"I'm looking into that as we speak and carrying out a fact-finding investigation," Alice Jill Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, told Reuters on Friday. 

"I'm calling on ... Hamas, the state of Palestine, Israel to put their torture tools down, to really have a focus on peace and a prospect of living side-by-side as neighbours in the future."

The UN human rights office said it had received several reports of mass detention, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance of Palestinians in northern Gaza by the Israeli military. It has also recorded the arrests of thousands in the occupied West Bank.

Edwards said she also raised allegations of mass murders and mutilations of hostages and sexual violence against them with the Palestinian Authority's mission in Geneva.