Gaza: Over 300 bodies discovered in mass grave, UN demands access for investigators
Discovery of mass graves highlights urgent need to grant access to independent human rights investigators
The discovery of a mass grave inside the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip this week as met with grief and horror from Palestinians, drawing condemnation from the United Nations and calls for a transparent and credible investigation
Palestinian officials have reported that hundreds of bodies have been found at the sites of Al Nasser hospital in Khan Younis and al-Shifa medical compound in Gaza City.
The discovery of a mass grave inside the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip this week as met with grief and horror from Palestinians, drawing condemnation from the United Nations and calls for a transparent and credible investigation.
Over 300 bodies have been uncovered so far from the hospital after Israeli forces withdrew on April 7.
The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday said more bodies were found at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the enclave’s largest health facility, which the rights body said was “an empty shell” after a two-week Israeli siege ended there on April 1.
The mass graves at Gaza’s two largest medical facilities are among the several discovered since Israel launched its war on the besieged coastal enclave on October 7, killing more than 34,000 Palestinians. Israel’s offensive came after Hamas fighters carried out attacks inside Israel, killing 1,139 people.
“The harrowing discovery of these mass graves underscores the urgency of ensuring immediate access for human rights investigators, including forensic experts, to the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure that evidence is preserved and to carry out independent and transparent investigations with the aim of guaranteeing accountability for any violations of international law,” said Amnesty International’s senior director of Research, advocacy Erika Guevara Rosas.
“Lack of access for human rights investigators to Gaza has hampered effective investigations into the full scale of the human rights violations and crimes under international law committed over the past six months, allowing for the documentation of just a tiny fraction of these abuses.”
The UN called for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at the two hospitals.
The European Union on Wednesday backed a UN call for an independent probe. “This is something that forces us to call for an independent investigation of all the suspicions and all the circumstances because indeed it creates the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights committed,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said. “That’s why it’s important to have independent investigation and to ensure accountability.”
US Department of State spokesman Vedant Patel described the discovery of mass graves as “incredibly troubling”, adding that US officials asked the Israeli government for information.
Mass grave sites are potential crime scenes offering vital and time-sensitive forensic evidence. But the absence of forensic experts and the decimation of Gaza’s medical sector as a result of the war, along with the lack of availability of the necessary resources for the identification of bodies such as DNA testing, are huge obstacles to the identifications of remains.
“Ensuring the preservation of evidence is among the key measures the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israeli authorities to take in order to prevent genocide,” Guevara Rosas.
Amnesty said Israeli authorities must ensure they comply with the ICJ ruling by granting immediate access to independent human rights investigators and ensuring that all evidence of violations is preserved.
According to UN human rights chief Volker Turk, “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law.” “Let’s be clear, the intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat [disabled or injured] is a war crime,” he said on Tuesday.
Israeli operations in Gaza have come under heavy scrutiny from international bodies and human rights groups. A UN investigator last month said in a report that there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide in its war on Gaza.
On 26 January the International Court of Justice issued its first set of provisional measures, including the order for Israeli authorities to take “effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence” this includes not denying or otherwise restricting access by fact-finding missions, international mandates and other bodies to Gaza to assist in the preservation of evidence.
