SerpApi.Org
The United Nations’ human rights office on Tuesday condemned Israeli strikes in Gaza that it said had killed at least 57 people, including six children, in the past week.
“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.
He decried that “the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians.” The Israeli strikes had killed “at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women” from July 13 to 20, Kheetan said.
The Israel Defense Forces has in recent days announced a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who it said were involved in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, or the subsequent holding of hostages.
It also reported striking a weapons depot, an arms manufacturing site, and a rocket-launching position, saying that this infrastructure posed a threat to its troops.
Kheetan said the strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims “killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line,” referring to the border between an IDF-controlled majority of the Strip and its remainder, which is de facto controlled by Hamas.
In attacks on July 17 and 18, Kheetan said the UN rights office had determined that 10 Israeli strikes killed at least 21 Palestinians.
“In one of these attacks, on an apartment in Gaza City, five members of one family were killed together: Both parents and three siblings, reportedly aged eight, 15, and 17,” he said.
Kheetan stressed that “the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza,” adding: “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime.”
Though it was not immediately clear which strikes he was referring to, Israel said strikes on July 17 killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad sniper, as well as a member of Hamas’s operations division, and that strikes on July 18 struck weapons depots, as well as two Hamas terrorists, including a commander, who invaded Israel on October 7 and were responsible for the taking of hostages.
Israel has in recent months ramped up its efforts to target and kill terrorists involved in the October 7, 2023, massacre and its aftermath.
Israel rejects accusations that it ever targets civilians, and says it upholds all laws of war. It acknowledges that noncombatants are sometimes killed unintentionally, and notes that Hamas deliberately operates from civilian areas.
On Tuesday, Kheetan warned that Israel’s constant moving of the Yellow Line westwards had left the Palestinian population in Gaza “trapped in an ever-shrinking area.”
The Yellow Line was initially drawn according to the US-brokered truce, but Israel has expanded its control of the Strip in the months since, as Hamas has refused to disarm.
The IDF’s expansion, Kheetan said, presents “a continuous threat to life as the Israeli military appears to routinely fire on Palestinians for mere presence in the vicinity of that line, in violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.”
More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the truce took effect in October, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The UN rights office has so far verified the killing of 685 Palestinians between last October and April, Kheetan said.
The Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the UN spokesman’s remarks.
Earlier this week, officials involved in efforts to apply the US’s peace plan for Gaza told The Times of Israel that the framework envisioned last fall is moving forward in “baby steps,” but that meaningful progress on Hamas’s disarmament, de-radicalization, and widespread reconstruction could still be years down the line.
Hamas, which remains the de facto governing authority in the parts of the Strip not controlled by the IDF, is still refusing to disarm. Israel, in the meantime, has yet to approve procedural measures surrounding some parts of the plan — such as the deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops, the vetting of a new Palestinian police force, and humanitarian processes.
Nava Freiberg contributed to this report.
The post UN condemns Israeli attacks in Gaza, after raft of strikes on Oct. 7 terrorists appeared first on The Times of Israel.
Never miss important Israel stories - get the free Times of Israel Daily Edition
