US Muslim group calls for UN probe into video of Israeli forces shooting, burying Palestinians

By Servet Gunerigok

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Wednesday for a UN investigation into a video showing Israeli forces shooting two apparently unarmed Palestinians and burying them with a wheel loader.

The video, aired by Al Jazeera Arabic, depicts the victims walking in an open area along the coast of Gaza.

"This heinous war crime and the many other similar crimes committed daily by the genocidal Israeli government must be investigated by the UN as part of the ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced starvation being imposed on the Palestinian people with the complicity of the Biden administration," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper in a statement.

"The forces of the far-right Israeli government seem to kill Palestinians on a whim and then treat their bodies like trash. This genocide must be stopped, not excused or supported with weapons and rhetoric," he added.

It remains unknown when the incident took place, but the latest footage came days after another video that showed an Israeli drone tracking and attacking four Palestinians in Khan Younis, which left them dead in a series of strikes.

Regarding the killings, the US on Saturday called on Israel to investigate “credible allegations of law of war violations.”

Asked about the video, a State Department spokesperson told Anadolu that the “contents of the video are disturbing.”

⁠“We have not verified the footage, but we have asked the Israelis for more information and an investigation,” the spokesperson said.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Palestinian territories since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have since been killed and some 75,000 injured amid mass destruction and 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, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.