Volker Turk, the United Nations human rights chief, has mentioned he’s “horrified” by the destruction of Nasser Medical Advanced and al-Shifa Hospital within the Gaza Strip and stories of mass graves present in and across the hospitals amid Israel’s warfare on Gaza.
In a press release launched on Tuesday, Turk known as for unbiased and clear investigations after Palestinian authorities mentioned this week they’d recovered a whole bunch of our bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the southern metropolis earlier this month.
“Given the prevailing local weather of impunity, this could embody worldwide investigators,” Turk mentioned, noting that hospitals are entitled to particular safety below worldwide humanitarian regulation and known as “the intentional killing” of civilians and detainees a warfare crime.
As search operations continued on Tuesday, civil defence crews mentioned they’d recovered not less than 17 extra our bodies, bringing the entire up to now to 310.
Reporting from the close by metropolis of Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud mentioned the our bodies that have been being retrieved included these of kids, girls, medical employees, wounded individuals and sufferers, in keeping with Gaza’s Civil Defence.
He added that medical employees and evacuees who had managed to go away the hospital earlier than the Israeli military’s withdrawal had described scenes of “horror, mass killings and arrests to the purpose the whole hospital turned from a spot of therapeutic into a large graveyard”.
The Israeli military in a press release on Tuesday mentioned the declare that it buried Palestinian our bodies was “baseless and unfounded”.
It mentioned that in its operation within the space of Nasser Hospital, corpses buried by Palestinians within the space “have been examined” in accordance “to the trouble to find hostages and lacking individuals”.
“The examination was performed in a carful method and completely in locations the place intelligence indicated the potential presence of hostages,” it added, saying that that the examined our bodies which didn’t belong to Israeli captives “have been returned to their place”.
Zainah Haroun, a spokesperson for Al-Haq, an unbiased Palestinian rights organisation based mostly within the occupied West Financial institution, mentioned what was wanted was “a correct investigative mechanism” to be given full and unrestricted entry to the Gaza Strip as an entire, together with the websites the place mass graves have been uncovered.
“A lot of the data that we’re getting in the intervening time is from extremely courageous Palestinian journalists who’re reporting these horrific
atrocities on the bottom and are additionally being focused by Israel,” she informed Al Jazeera.
At the least 34,183 Palestinians, together with greater than 14,500 kids, have been killed in Israeli assaults on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas led a shock assault inside Israel, killing greater than 1,130 individuals.
The dying toll introduced on Tuesday by the Ministry of Well being in Gaza included not less than 32 individuals killed previously 24 hours. One other 77,143 have been wounded, whereas greater than 7,000 others are assumed to be below the rubble as a result of a ferocious Israeli marketing campaign that has levelled most of Gaza.
Turk, in his assertion, condemned a sequence of Israeli strikes on Rafah previously few days that killed largely kids and ladies, repeating his warning in opposition to a full-scale incursion on the overcrowded space of 64sq km (25sq miles), the place greater than 1.4 million Palestinians have been forcibly cornered.
“Each 10 minutes, a baby is killed or wounded. They’re protected below the legal guidelines of warfare, and but they’re ones who’re disproportionately paying the final word value on this warfare,” Turk mentioned.
“The most recent pictures of a untimely baby taken from the womb of her dying mom, of the adjoining two homes the place 15 kids and 5 girls have been killed – that is past warfare,” he added.
On the similar time, Turk criticised grave human rights violations that persist within the occupied West Financial institution regardless of worldwide condemnation of accelerating assaults by settlers, usually within the presence of Israeli forces.