April 25, 2024
HONG KONG – Representatives of the United Nations are alarmed by what is called as “possible war crimes” and demand an independent investigation after hundreds of bodies were found in the premises of a hospital in Khan Younis amid continued Israeli bombardment. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation just condemned such crime against humanity and “state terrorism”.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 23, a total of 283 bodies were recovered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in central Gaza and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north. At least 42 of these have been identified.
Among the dead were older people, women, and some wounded while others were found tied with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.
“The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, as he called for independent investigations 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,” said the High Commissioner.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told journalists in Geneva that reports suggested there were 30 Palestinian bodies buried in two graves in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; one in front of the emergency building and the others in front of the dialysis building.
Further, the bodies of 12 Palestinians have now 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, “despite the claim by the Israeli Defense Forces to have killed 200 Palestinians during the Al-Shifa medical complex operation.
Turk also lamented the “unabated” grave human rights violations that continued in the West Bank despite international condemnation of “massive settler attacks” between April 12 and April 14 that had been facilitated by the Israeli army.
There were also reports that several Palestinians had been unlawfully killed in the Nur Shams operation “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 a statement on Tuesday, Turk also warned against a full-scale ground 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, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or 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 OIC statement read.
The OIC also said it held the “Israeli occupation” accountable for the repercussions of its crimes and “continued terrorist practices against the Palestinian people”, which negate all human values and constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
“The OIC renewed its call on the international community, in particular the 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,” 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 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, who is also former assistant professor and chairperson 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’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 told China Daily.
“This is happening again in Gaza, as Israel, supported by the West, violently suppresses anti-colonial resistance. 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,” 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 escalated between Israelis and Palestinians after Oct 7 last year.