A mass grave containing more than 300 bodies has been unearthed at the Nasser hospital complex in the southern Gaza city of Han Younis, Gaza’s civil defense said, after Israeli forces withdrew from the area earlier this month. A total of 324 bodies have been exhumed so far. According to the Gaza Civil Defense, the victims are of different ages and genders. So far, only some of them have been identified.
It is not yet known what caused their death. CNN’s local contact told the newspaper that the people of Han Junius temporarily buried their family members killed in the January attacks on the hospital grounds. When Israel raided the hospital in mid-February, they left the area, only to return weeks later. It was then that they noticed that the bodies had been exhumed and at least some of them had been reburied in a common mass grave. The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) may have dug up the bodies in order to use DNA tests to determine if there were hostages among them.
The IDF told CNN on Tuesday that any “allegations that the IDF buried Palestinian bodies are baseless and unsubstantiated.” They admitted that bodies buried by Palestinians had been examined in order to locate the hostages, but stressed that “the examination was carried out carefully and only in places where intelligence indicated the possible presence of hostages”. “We carried out the investigation respectfully, while preserving the dignity of the deceased. The examined bodies, which belonged to non-Israeli hostages, were returned to their locations,” the IDF said.
On February 15, the IDF raided Han Júnisz Nasser’s hospital in southern Gaza – one of the few hospitals still operating in the strip – saying that intelligence indicated that Hamas militants were hiding in the building. According to the reports of several doctors, the doctors and health workers who were in the hospital during the raid were severely abused by the Israeli soldiers. At the end of March, the Unicef spokesperson also visited the completely destroyed hospital.
The Gaza Civil Defense previously announced that at least 300 corpses were also discovered in Gaza’s al-Sifa hospital after the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday that he was horrified by reports of mass graves in Gaza hospitals. The High Commissioner’s spokesman said that so far 283 bodies have been found at Nasser and 30 at al-Sifa hospital, adding that several victims’ hands were tied, indicating serious human rights violations.
Displaced Palestinians in a refugee camp set up in a UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, in the central part of the Gaza Strip, on April 23, 2024 – Photo: Ramadan Abed / Reuters
Germany continues to cooperate with UNRWA after a UN report says Israel has yet to provide evidence to support terror charges, the Guardian reports.
The investigation was launched after Israel accused the agency of the involvement of dozens of its employees in the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. According to the commission of inquiry, Israel has so far provided no evidence that some UNRWA employees are indeed members of terrorist organizations, but the report published several recommendations to strengthen UNRWA’s neutrality.
In a joint statement by the German foreign ministry and the development ministry, UNRWA urged UNRWA to implement the report’s recommendations as soon as possible, including strengthening the internal audit function and improving external oversight of project management. “To support these reforms, the German government will soon continue its cooperation with UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, as Australia, Canada, Sweden and Japan, among others, have already done,” the statement said.
The United States, previously UNRWA’s biggest donor, has ruled out continuing funding until March 2025 at the earliest.
The US Senate voted on the 95 billion dollar (approx. HUF 35,000 billion) foreign aid package, which also includes military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan – we wrote more about this here.
