JERUSALEM, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Israel rejected on Thursday a United Nations report, which found Israel may have committed crimes against humanity in response to Palestinians' protests in the Gaza Strip.

Israel slammed the report by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) as "biased."

"The council is setting new records for hypocrisy and mendacity out of an obsessive hatred of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

He accused Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement that runs Gaza, of firing rockets at Israeli citizens and carrying out "terrorist activity during the violent demonstrations along the fence."

"Israel will not allow Hamas to attack Israel's sovereignty and people, and will maintain the right of self-defense," he said.

Israel's Minister of Public Security and Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan rejected the report as "patently false" and said that the UNHRC has "long lost its legitimacy."

In a statement released by his office, Erdan said that the army's actions in Gaza will not be changed.

"The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and Israeli security forces will continue to protect Israeli citizens in the south, regardless of the UNHRC's false and absurd reports," he added.

UN investigators have accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians and said that they might have committed "war crimes" in their lethal response to a string of protests that were held between March 30 and Dec. 31 of 2018.

The independent Commission of Inquiry, set up last year by the UNHRC, said that Israeli forces killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others with live ammunition near the fence that divides the two territories.

In a statement, the panel said that it found "reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing that they were clearly recognizable as such."

The report said that 35 of those killed were children, three were clearly identifiable paramedics and two were clearly marked journalists, the report said.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed the report and urged the International Criminal Court to "immediately" open an investigation into the alleged crimes.