GAZA CITY (AFP) – A committee set up by the Hamas government is providing information to European lawyers investigating alleged war crimes by Israel in the Gaza war, its director said on Sunday.

"We provide documents, reports and evidence of crimes to all international bodies aiding the Palestinian people in bringing Israeli civilian and military leaders to trial and issuing warrants for their arrest," Diya al-Madhun, the judge who heads the committee, told AFP.

"We have provided a group of independent lawyers in Britain with documents, information and evidence concerning war crimes committed by Israeli political and military leaders, including (Tzipi) Livni."

He added however that the foreign lawyers acted independently and were not hired by the Islamist Palestinian group.

Livni, who served as foreign minister during the war, cancelled a trip to London last week after an arrest warrant was issued against her by a British court, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.

Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the three-week Israeli offensive launched on December 27, 2008 and aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire from the impoverished enclave.

A controversial UN Human Rights Council report authored by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone earlier this year accused both Israel and Palestinian militants of committing war crimes during the conflict.

Hamas, which seized Gaza in June 2007 after a week of bloody street battles, is blacklisted as a terrorist group by Israel and the West.