The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said that about 70 per cent of those killed in the Hamas-Israel conflict were children and women. The report highlighted “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law” on the part of the Israeli military, CNN said.
Several United Nations agencies have once again sounded the alarm over the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in most of Gaza and the civilian casualties resulting from more than a year of Israeli military operations. Moreover, the continuation of these attacks “demonstrates an apparent indifference to the deaths of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare selected,” the report said.
Of the confirmed deaths, 80 per cent occurred in residential buildings or similar dwellings, of which 44 per cent were children and 26 per cent women, according to the report. In addition, OHCHR said it found a pattern showing “high numbers of babies and young children, women, older persons, and families killed together in residential buildings.”
UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk said the report showed that civilian casualties were “a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law – namely the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack,” adding that that pattern continued “unabated, over one year after the start of the war.”
The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, reported on Friday “at least 64 attacks against schools – almost two every day – were registered in the Gaza Strip last month.” The strikes killed about 128 people, many of them children, according to the data. Nearly half of the attacks recorded in October occurred in northern Gaza, according to the latest estimates. More than 95 per cent of schools in the Gaza Strip have been partially or completely destroyed since the fighting began.
A World Health Organisation report on food availability in the Gaza Strip released on Friday said there was “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.” The number of aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip is lower than at any time in the past year. In the second half of October, the average number of lorries entering the Gaza Strip fell to just 58 per day, the lowest number since last November.
Before the war, around 500 commercial and humanitarian lorries entered Gaza every day, while food prices in the Gaza Strip have risen 312 per cent since the start of the conflict, according to the report.
Tensions in the region persist
The Gaza Civil Defence Agency said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes overnight killed at least 14 Palestinians, including women and children. An airstrike on the tents of displaced Palestinians in the southern neighbourhood of Khan Younis killed at least nine people, including children and women. The Israeli military, for its part, said it killed dozens of Hamas militants.
On Thursday, 14 Republican US senators wrote a letter to the State Department asking Washington to immediately freeze the assets of Hamas officials living in Qatar, extradite several senior Hamas officials living there and ask authorities to end their hospitality to the group’s top leadership. Qatar, a key US partner in the Middle East, has hosted Hamas’ political office for more than a decade and has allowed many of the organisation’s senior leaders to reside there. However, Qatar is likely to honour the US request, analysts say.
The request has met with criticism. The measure would complicate engagement with Hamas elements potentially more inclined to compromise and could increase the influence of more hostile states, such as Iran, over the group, as Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages seized during its surprise attack on Israel last October. Numerous rounds of talks aimed at ending the 13-month war in Gaza have collapsed.
Hamas leaders have been preparing to leave Qatar for months, suggesting Turkey and Iraq as possible alternatives. The group recently opened a political office in Baghdad. Hamas officials deny that Qatar has ordered the organisation to leave the country, and Qatar’s foreign ministry has not responded to the reports.
