Hospital bodies in Gaza point to ‘possible war crimes’

HONG-KONG – United Nations representatives are alarmed by what are being called ‘possible war crimes’ and are demanding an independent investigation after hundreds of bodies were found in the premises of a hospital in Khan Younis amid ongoing Israeli bombardments. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has just condemned such crimes against humanity and “state terrorism.”

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a total of 283 bodies were recovered on April 23 from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in central Gaza and from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north. At least 42 of these have been identified.

The dead included elderly people, women and some were injured, while others were found tied up with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.

“The deliberate killing of civilians, prisoners and others outside combat is a war crime,” said Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as he called for an independent investigation into the deaths.

“Every ten minutes a child is killed or injured. They are protected by the laws of war, and yet they are the ones who disproportionately pay the highest price in this war,” the High Commissioner said.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told journalists in Geneva that reports suggested that 30 Palestinian bodies had been buried in two graves in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; one for the emergency building and the other for the dialysis building.

Furthermore, the bodies of twelve Palestinians have now been identified from these locations in Al-Shifa, but identification has not yet been possible for the remaining individuals. Shamdasani said there could be “many more” victims, “despite the Israeli army’s claim that it killed 200 Palestinians during the operation at the Al-Shifa medical complex.

Turk also deplored the “unabated” serious human rights violations that continued in the West Bank, despite international condemnation of the “mass settler attacks” between April 12 and 14, which were facilitated by the Israeli army.

There were also reports that several Palestinians had been unlawfully killed during the Nur Shams operation “and that the ISF used unarmed Palestinians to protect their forces from attacks and killed others in apparent extrajudicial killings,” the OHCHR said.

Turk had also strongly condemned the recent Israeli attacks in Rafah, which resulted in the deaths of many women and children.

In a statement on Tuesday, Turk also warned of a large-scale ground invasion in an area with more than 1.2 million civilians. According to a report by Xinhua News Agency, this would violate international humanitarian and human rights law, likely leading to further atrocities. .

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) issued a statement condemning “the continued tragic massacre by the Israeli occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories” and reports of mass graves recently discovered at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

“The OIC considered this a war crime, a crime against humanity and organized state terrorism requiring investigation, accountability and sanctions under international criminal law, and emphasized that the International Criminal Court must take responsibility in this regard,” the OIC statement said. read.

The OIC also said it has held the “Israeli occupation” responsible for the consequences of its crimes and “continued terrorist practices against the Palestinian people,” which nullify all human values ​​and constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

“The OIC renewed its call to the international community, in particular the Security Council, on the need to end the war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and to provide international protection to the Palestinian people,” it added.

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 murder” of civilians in Gaza was a further indication of Israel’s “genocidal policy” against the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian people desire international justice and an end to the occupation. Israel has rejected hundreds of UN resolutions, and in light of so much evidence of ongoing genocide in Gaza, the time is now urgent to force Israel to stop its actions,” said Abualrob, also a former assistant professor and chairman of the department. of Media at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

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 is 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 told China Daily .

“This is happening again in Gaza as Israel, backed by the West, violently suppresses anti-colonial resistance. The imperialist power of the Global North perpetuates a world in which white lives are valued more than those of Third World people, who are consigned to mass graves,” he added.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 14,685 children and 9,670 women, the UN High Commissioner’s office said on April 22 since fighting between Israelis and Palestinians escalated after October 7 last year.