International
Israeli strikes on Gaza refugee camp could be war crimes: UN
The UN Human Rights Office stated on Wednesday that the lethal Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip’s largest refugee camp may be considered as potential war crimes.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — Deadly Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip’s largest refugee camp “could amount to war crimes”, the UN Human Rights Office said on Wednesday.
Israeli strikes have targeted the Jabalia refugee camp twice in two days, killing and wounding dozens, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
Israel said Tuesday’s raid was a successful hit on top Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari.
“Given the high number of civilian casualties & the scale of destruction following Israeli air strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes,” the office wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Israel has relentlessly pounded Gaza in retribution for the worst attack in the country’s history.
Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza on 7 October, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 230 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed 8,796 people, mainly women and children, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry.
The principle of proportionality referred to by the UN plays a central role in the wars of law defined by the Geneva Conventions.
Civilians and civilian structures must be spared — but the death of civilians during a conflict does not necessarily constitute a war crime.
Warring parties can launch attacks deemed proportionate on military targets even while knowing that civilians could also be hit.
A crime is committed when an attack is deliberately carried out against civilians, or if the scale of the damage to civilians is excessive compared to the military advantage.
The International Criminal Court is the only independent international legal authority that carries out investigations into genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but Israel is not a member.
AFPTV images from Wednesday’s strike on the camp showed extensive damage and rescuers clawing through rubble to extract blood-stained casualties.
The large death toll from the strikes has drawn a chorus of international condemnation, with Bolivia severing diplomatic ties with Israel in protest.
Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel “to condemn the Israeli war that is killing innocent people in Gaza”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres is “appalled over the escalating violence in Gaza, including the killing of Palestinians, including women and children in Israeli air strikes in residential areas of the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
— AFP
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Israel? What Israel?
https://t.me/c/1798240735/749
What do you mean “could” be war crimes? Putin supposedly “kidnaps” some Ukrainian childrem and he is already a war crime criminal.
The UN and some Human Rights group are too focused on numbers without delving deeper into other underlying facts of such happenings. It is a known fact that the these terrorist groups capitalised on civilians to provide the cover for them. And we also know that among the civilians a pretty good number are sympathisers for the terrorist groups simply out of fear and/or their religion.This rout will prevail as long as the civilian mass fail to see that religious fanatism is the wrong cause for freedom and peace
Is building a “refugee camp” on in the midst of military targets not also a war crime? Why did the strike kill two Hamas Commanders? Were they “refugees”?
So Hamas can use hospitals to store they weapons and launch missiles without it being considered a war crime. But when Israeli decides to target said militarised places after giving civilians ample warning time to evacuate. That is a “war crime.”
Meanwhile, this is the same UN that will not call out the genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Communist China.
Can the UN adv what Israeli counter offensive army to do when the earlier attackers are reported to station weapons, arms, within and near hospitals, schools, aid centres?