Since April 21, Gaza health authorities have reported the discovery of several mass graves inside Nasser's medical complex, in the heart of Khan Younis, south of the Palestinian enclave, from where more than 300 bodies have been exhumed, in mostly children and women, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Nasser hospital has been one of the civilian buildings taken over by the Israeli Army, which claimed that beneath the facilities there was a base of operations for its rival in the war, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. The UN expressed its horror and demanded an international investigation into the matter on April 23.
Horrors are reality in Gaza. In the Gaza Strip, it has been more than six months since the ongoing offensive began, a war declared by Israel against Hamas in response to the Islamist group's bloody attack that left around 1,200 people dead and more than 200 hostages on October 7. of 2023.
Within the framework of that war, on February 14, the Israeli occupation forces sounded warning messages with loudspeakers around the Nasser hospital, the second largest in Gaza, asking dozens of people who found shelter from the bombings inside of the medical center to evacuate the building immediatelyfaced with an inevitable raid in the vicinity.
Amid the desperation of thousands of people, who were instructed to move to the 'humanitarian zone' in Rafah, also in the south of the Strip and on the border with Egypt, Nasser's doctors and patients were not required to evacuate. , which raised hopes that the Israeli Army would not use force against a building full of civilians. A hypothesis that, a day later, would be proven wrong.
On February 15, arguing that they were looking for an underground Hamas base where they would allegedly find some of the 133 Israeli hostages taken on October 7 and who still remain in Gaza or the leader of the Palestinian militia in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the Army of Israel unleashed one of the most violent raids against a civilian building since the escalation of the conflict.
Videos posted on social media show Israeli forces forcibly entering Nasser, forcing their way with explosions and the use of firearms, resulting in multiple fatalities inside the hospital, including a patient and a doctor, according to Doctors Without Borders and the Gaza Ministry of Health.
After weeks of a hermetic siege, in which access was not allowed to members of the World Health Organization (WHO) or any non-governmental organization, the Israeli military forces liberated the site, giving access to the health authorities of Gaza, Palestinians desperate to know the status of their relatives and acquaintances detained during the assault and international journalists. The image they encountered is unspeakable.
Tortured and decomposing: more than 300 bodies buried under the Nasser Hospital
Members of the Gaza Civil Defense reported, on April 21, the discovery of 190 Palestinian bodies that were buried in clandestine graves within the medical complex. By April 22, the figure rose to 284 fatalities who had been buried and Gazan sources and Hamas, which controls the enclave, suggest that the perpetrators are members of the Israeli Army.
“So far, we have found the buried bodies of 283 people, murdered in cold blood by the Israeli occupation army,” said Ismail al-Thawabteh, head of the Communication department of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, on April 22.
Images from the search efforts show entire families, flooded with helplessness and despair, asking about their missing relatives, searching through the piles of unidentified bodies and praying not to find a familiar face among all the victims. Some of the bodies found have clear marks of torture.
“Some of the corpses were without clothes, which undoubtedly indicates that they were detained, tortured and subjected to ill-treatment by the occupation army,” stated the Gaza Civil Defense on April 22. Accusations that the Israeli Army has refuted, calling them “baseless.”
This April 23, the search teams in Gaza raised the number of bodies buried in mass graves to 310, with the possibility that the number will continue to rise in the coming days, while Israel disclaims responsibility, admitting that, although they “dig up” some bodies to “examine” whether they were hostages, They did so “carefully and respectfully.” The Israeli government did not specify how the bodies were “examined.”
Horror at the United Nations
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, was “horrified” by the discovery of a mass cemetery at the Nasser hospital, while his spokesperson revealed that some of the bodies that have been disinterred to comply with the process ID cards have marks of torture.
“Some had their hands tied, which, of course, indicates a serious violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” said Ravina Shamdasani, who also noted that the office headed by Türk has received reports related to executions. extrajudicial attacks perpetrated by Israeli forces in different parts of Gaza.
For his part, the spokesman for the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, stressed the need to carry out a “credible and independent” investigation to reconstruct the events and find those responsible, for which, according to Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for Guterres, “an immediate ceasefire is needed.”
The Israeli Army left Khan Younis on April 7, after four months of occupation against the city that, according to Israel, is the heart of Hamas.
The fateful scenes at the Nasser Hospital are almost a carbon copy of what was experienced inside the Al-Shifa medical center, the largest in Gaza, which was also the target of an Israeli operation in recent months, alleging the same military objective with which they justified the raid on Nasser. So far, there is no evidence of Hamas military bases under Al-Shifa.
With EFE, AP, Reuters and local media
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