The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from a hospital in Gaza, including one discovered a few minutes ago. A few days ago, the Israeli and Palestinian authorities gave different explanations.
The Palestinian civil defense agency said over the weekend that it had found a mass grave containing 283 bodies on the grounds of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, two weeks after a similar mass grave was found. found at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense Organization, an emergency services organization, said some of the bodies found in Khan Younis were handcuffed, shot in the head or wearing prison uniforms. He accused Israeli forces of killing and burying them. The Israeli military declined to address those claims on Tuesday and they could not be independently verified.
On Tuesday, hours after the United Nations' top human rights official called for an investigation into the mass graves, the Israeli military said its forces had exhumed bodies buried by Palestinians “in area” of Nasser Hospital and examined them as part of the operation. Efforts to find hostages. It did not comment on the report of the mass grave in Al-Shifa.
The Israeli military declined to say how many bodies were exhumed and reburied by the army, how they died or whether hostages' remains were found at the site. It also did not say how the bodies were examined to determine whether they were Israeli hostages.
“The autopsy was performed respectfully while maintaining the dignity of the deceased,” the statement said. “The bodies tested were not those of Israeli hostages, and were returned to their places.”
It is unclear where the people discovered in the mass grave were originally buried. But wartime chaos in Gaza has led Palestinians to often bury their dead there. mass grave or in the yard and backyard hastily that was unthinkable in peacetime.
In January, an official at Nasser told journalists that hospital staff buried about 150 people in the hospital yard because fighting nearby made going to the cemetery too dangerous.
Besides the tomb at Nasser hospital, a mass grave reportedly discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli military operation there. The United Nations human rights office said Tuesday that the Gaza government reported that 30 more bodies were found in two graves there, 12 of which have been identified. The office said it could not confirm the accounts.
