UN human rights chief decries latest Israeli strikes on Gaza

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The UN human rights chief on Tuesday decried the latest series of Israeli strikes on Gaza killing mostly women and children.

Volker Turk's remarks came after at least nine children among 16 Palestinians were killed on Sunday in an Israeli bombing targeting several homes east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

"This is beyond warfare," his spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a UN briefing in Geneva.

"We are also horrified by the destruction ... the discovery of mass graves," Shamdasani said.

At least 283 bodies have been recovered so far from the mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex after the Israeli army withdrew from the city on April 7 following a four-month ground offensive, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.

The UN calls for "independent, effective and transparent" investigations into the deaths, she said.

On reports that Israel will expand so-called "humanitarian zones" in Gaza ahead of its Rafah ground attack, she stressed: "There are no safe places in Gaza and any pretense that creating safe zones is actually dangerous."

"What we need is an immediate cease-fire," she reiterated.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

At least 34,151 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 77,000 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.