The number of bodies found in mass graves near hospital complexes in the Gaza Strip continues to rise. Palestinian authorities confirmed this Thursday that 49 bodies were exhumed from the last grave discovered, under Al-Shifa, in the city of Gaza.
The withdrawal of Israeli forces to intensify the military offensive in the south of the enclave allowed the search for Palestinian victims to be accelerated, which continues to be ongoing.
In al-Shifa Hospital alone, in Gaza city, three mass graves were discovered. Another three were at the Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, in the South, and the last one at the Kamal Adwan hospital complex, in the North. At least 520 bodies of men, women and children, including patients, were exhumed from these seven graves, according to local authorities.
“This is proof of the brutality of the criminal occupation army in the systematic attacks against the Palestinian people and the health system”, reads a statement from the Government of the Gaza Strip, under the control of Hamas, cited by the Turkish news agency Anadolu . “The occupation seeks to destroy the foundations of life in Gaza to carry out its plans of extermination and expulsion.”
In total, over seven months of Israeli military retaliation, following the Hamas attack on October 7, “around 140 mass graves” have already been opened in the Gaza Strip, some with hundreds of bodies, according to a report by the organization Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, published on April 25th.
In some cases, the bodies had their hands tied, showing signs of torture and shooting. Others will have been buried alive, admit United Nations experts, who say they are “horrified by the details that emerge from the mass graves” now revealed.
Of more than 390 bodies buried under the Shifa and Nasser hospital complexes, only 65 were identified by family members, taking into account the advanced state of decomposition and the forms of mutilation and torture they were victims of, explains Yamen Abu Suleiman, head of the Khan Younis Civil Defense department.
“After weeks, the graves were found, the smell of death can still be felt inside Al-Shifa. And we believe there are more of these ditches,” said Mu’tasim Salah, a member of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s emergency committee.
Salah also reported the discovery of skulls, separated from the bodies, challenging international institutions in the area of justice and health to go to the Gaza Strip to investigate and “document such crimes, in order to hold the occupying State accountable”.
Since October 7 last year, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed under Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, and almost 80,000 have been injured. The majority of fatalities (around 70%) are women and children.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that there are still “more than 13,000 Palestinians missing under rubble, buried indiscriminately in mass graves or imprisoned” in Israeli detention centers — where a few dozen Palestinian detainees also died, in circumstances still to be determined. clarify by the Government of Israel.
