UN urges independent probe after grim finds at sites of Israeli raids
The United Nations is alarmed by what it called “possible war crimes”, and is demanding an independent investigation after hundreds of bodies were found in the premises of a hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza after Israeli raids.
According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), nearly 340 bodies were found at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and more bodies at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north.
Among the dead were older people, women, and wounded, while others were found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes, the agency said on April 23.
“The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, as he urged independent probes into the deaths.
“Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war,” the UN official said.
Ravina Shamdasani, OHCHR spokesperson, told journalists in Geneva that reports suggested that there were 30 Palestinian bodies buried in two graves in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital.
The bodies of 12 Palestinians have been identified from these locations at Al-Shifa, but identification has not yet been possible for the remaining individuals. Shamdasani said there could be “many more” victims.
Turk also lamented “unabated” grave human rights violations that continued in the West Bank despite international condemnation of “massive settler attacks” between April 12 and 14 that had been facilitated by the Israeli Security Forces (ISF).
There were reports that several Palestinians had been killed in an operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp last week “and that the ISF used unarmed Palestinians to shield their forces from attack and killed others in apparent extrajudicial executions”, according to the OHCHR.
Turk had also strongly condemned recent Israeli strikes in Rafah that resulted in the deaths of many women and children.
In an April 23 statement, Turk warned against a full-scale incursion into an area with over 1.2 million civilians, saying it would violate international humanitarian and human rights law, likely leading to more atrocities.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in a statement, condemned “the continued tragic massacre by the Israeli occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and reports of mass graves recently discovered in the Nasser Medical Complex compound in Khan Younis.
“The OIC considered this as war crime, a crime against humanity, and an organized state terrorism that requires investigation, accountability, and sanction under international criminal law, stressing that the International Criminal Court must assume its responsibility in this regard,” the statement read.
The OIC reminded “the international community, in particular the (UN) Security Council, on the need to stop the war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and to provide international protection for the Palestinian people”.
Mohammad Abualrob, director of the Palestinian Government Communications Center in the West Bank, told China Daily that the discovery of mass graves and the “brutal killing” of civilians in Gaza was a further indication of Israel’s “genocidal policies” against the Palestinian people.
“The Palestinian people yearn for international justice and an end to the occupation. Israel has rejected hundreds of UN resolutions, and in the face of so much evidence of ongoing genocide in Gaza, the time is now urgent to force Israel to halt its actions,” said Abualrob.
Jawaid Iqbal, chairman of the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University in India, blamed the long history of “imperialism” for the mass graves found in Gaza.
“Whether it’s the burial sites found at indigenous boarding schools in Canada or the US, or the graves of Nazi war victims, white supremacist and colonialist states have always used racist extermination to maintain their power,” Iqbal said.
“This is happening again in Gaza” at the hands of Israel, supported by the West, he said, adding: “The imperialist power of the Global North perpetuates a world where white lives are valued more than those of people from the Third World, who are consigned to mass graves.”
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 14,685 children and 9,670 women, since fighting escalated between Israelis and Palestinians after Oct 7 last year, the OHCHR said on April 22.
