Gaza Authorities Say More Bodies Were Discovered in Mass Grave

The invention of the mass grave at Nasser Hospital got here two weeks after an analogous mass grave was discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Metropolis.

In an announcement this week, the U.N. Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, cited reviews that some our bodies had been discovered with their arms “tied and stripped of their garments.”

These reviews, which got here from the Gazan authorities, couldn’t be independently verified, and the group didn’t present proof for its declare.

At the very least one of many our bodies exhumed since Sunday was seen carrying blue medical scrubs in a video posted to social media by a photographer, Haseeb Alwazeer. The particular person’s arms seemed to be sure collectively. This physique was mendacity subsequent to others exhumed from the mass grave within the palm grove.

Docs on the hospital and the Gazan Well being Ministry had mentioned that some individuals who tried to flee the Nasser compound through the Israeli raid were shot at by Israeli soldiers, with some being killed or wounded.

Whereas that declare couldn’t be independently verified, a number of movies verified by The Occasions present gunshot victims mendacity on the bottom simply outdoors the north gate; others show folks utilizing a rope to pull bottles of water from throughout the road into the hospital complicated to keep away from a street the place victims had been shot.

On the time, the Israeli navy mentioned that it had “opened a safe route” to evacuate the civilians within the space however didn’t reply to questions on reviews that it had shot at Palestinians making an attempt to go away the hospital.

Amnesty Worldwide’s senior director of analysis and advocacy, Erika Guevara Rosas, mentioned human rights investigators and forensic consultants wanted fast entry to Gaza to make sure that proof of the graves could be preserved as a way to guarantee accountability for any violations of worldwide legislation.

“With out correct investigations to find out how these deaths passed off or what violations could have been dedicated, we could by no means discover out the reality of the horrors behind these mass graves,” she mentioned in a statement.

Israel’s navy left Nasser hospital in late February and continued to function in Khan Younis earlier than withdrawing from southern Gaza earlier this month. The withdrawal allowed Palestinian emergency providers — and members of the family — to start trying to find the lacking.

Jihad al-Bayouk, 26, mentioned that he had buried his older brother on the grounds of Nasser on Jan. 24 after he was killed in what he mentioned was an Israeli drone strike on their dwelling in Khan Younis. “I made positive to recollect the place so I may come again later and provides him a correct burial in an actual cemetery,” Mr. al-Bayouk, 26, mentioned by telephone on Wednesday.

He mentioned that when he got here again after Israeli forces had withdrawn from the realm, he couldn’t discover his brother’s physique or the palm timber he used to mark the place it was. So he started digging every single day, together with a crowd of others searching for the our bodies of their family members.

“The digging went on for days” earlier than he discovered his brother’s physique on Monday in a special spot from the place he had buried him, Mr. al-Bayouk mentioned. He mentioned that two of the three layers of plastic he had wrapped him with had been gone, and the third was torn off however held along with plastic clips.