Faced with the current “climate of impunity”, the UN called on Tuesday April 23 for independent international investigations after the discovery of mass graves in the two main hospitals in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the enclave’s two largest hospitals, Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. and the Nasser government medical complex in Khan Younes.
He thus called for “independent, effective and transparent investigations to be carried out”, adding that: “given the prevailing climate of impunity, international investigators should be involved in this process”. “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” he continued. “And intentionally killing civilians, detainees, and others considered “hors de combat” is a war crime. »
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been harshly targeted during the military operation carried out by the Israeli army in the Palestinian territory since the deadly attack perpetrated in Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas fighters from Gaza. According to Israel, the Palestinian Islamist movement used hospitals to carry out attacks and hide tunnels and weapons. Hamas has denied these accusations.
“The victims were reportedly buried deep in the ground and covered in trash.”
On Monday, the Gaza Strip’s civil defense claimed to have exhumed in three days about 283 bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces in mass graves inside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. As for Al-Shifa Hospital, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared in early April that it had been reduced to an “empty shell” littered with human remains by the latest Israeli operation.
The UN High Commission is trying to verify the number of deaths discovered at Nasser Hospital. “The victims were believed to have been buried deep in the ground and covered with waste,” high commission spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing, adding that elderly people, women and the injured were among them. the dead. Others were reportedly “found with their hands tied and without clothing.”
She also declared that the figure put forward by the Israeli army of some two hundred people killed during the last assault on Al-Shifa hospital, between March 18 and early April, could be “underestimated”. To date, she said, “we cannot corroborate the exact figures” of those killed in the two hospitals: “This is why we insist on the need for international investigations. »
