Lawyers representing the Comoros on Thursday asked International Criminal Court judges to order its chief prosecutor to reconsider her decision not to probe Israel's deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.

The Comoros, which has referred the case to the ICC, "asks the Chamber to request the Prosecutor to reconsider her decision not to open an investigation," its lawyers said in papers filed before the Hague-based court.

Dozens of protesters Wednesday tried to storm the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations, an AFP correspondent said, after the U.N. announced it lacked funds to rebuild the war-battered Palestinian territory.

Around 200 people demonstrated outside the U.N. compound in Gaza City, burning tyres and throwing stones.

An Israeli rights group Wednesday criticized the government for what it called a deliberate policy of launching air strikes on homes that killed hundreds of civilians during last year's Gaza war.

In a report examining 70 raids on residential buildings in the besieged Palestinian territory, B'Tselem said Israeli officials were responsible for civilian casualties during the 50-day conflict that killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians.

A rights group on Tuesday urged Palestinian authorities to abolish the death penalty, after two new sentences were handed down this month in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights called for "an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a form of punishment because it violates international human rights standards."

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday that it cannot afford to repair Gaza homes damaged in last year's war with Israel because donors have failed to pay.

"The agency has exhausted all funding to support repairs and rental subsidies," said the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Israeli conduct during last summer's war in the Gaza Strip increased the number of civilian casualties, an independent report has said, by failing to differentiate between military targets and civilian populations.

Despite claims to the contrary, the military did not give sufficient warning for civilians to evacuate residential areas before striking them, according to the report partly commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights and carried out by eight independent medical experts.

Some 200 radical Islamists tried to storm the French cultural center in Gaza City on Monday, shouting slogans threatening the lives of staff over Charlie Hebdo cartoons, an AFP photographer said.

"Damnation upon France!" the protesters chanted, waving the black flags adopted by jihadists.

Egypt is to reopen the Rafah crossing with Gaza for three days starting Tuesday, for the third time since it was shut in late October after a deadly suicide bombing, security officials said.

The crossing, the only access point to the Palestinian Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel, was to be reopened last week, but the decision was postponed after an Egyptian police officer working at the terminal was kidnapped and killed.

Protest graffiti was sprayed outside the French cultural centre in Gaza before dawn Saturday following the publication of a new cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

"You will go to hell, French journalists," read one of the slogans daubed on the walls of the cultural centre compound, which has been closed since it was damaged in a fire last October.

The United States joined Israel in condemning the International Criminal Court decision to open a preliminary probe Friday into possible war crimes committed against Palestinians, blasting it as a "tragic irony".

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said her office would conduct an "analysis in full independence and impartiality" into alleged war crimes by Israel, including those committed during last year's Gaza offensive.