Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – Amnesty International reported, Fresh evidence of deadly unlawful attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip, gathered by Amnesty International, demonstrates how Israeli forces continue to flout international humanitarian law, obliterating entire families with total impunity.
The organization carried out an investigation into four Israeli strikes, three in December 2023, after the humanitarian pause ended, and one in January 2024, that killed at least 95 civilians, including 42 children, in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost governorate at a time when it was supposedly the “safest” area in the strip, but where Israeli forces are currently gearing up for a ground operation. Such an operation will likely have devastating consequences for more than a million people who are crammed within an area of 63 km2 following successive waves of mass displacement.
In all four attacks, the organization did not find any indication that the residential buildings hit could be considered legitimate military objectives or that people in the buildings were military targets, raising concerns that these strikes were direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and must therefore be investigated as war crimes.
Even if Israeli forces had intended to target legitimate military objectives in the vicinity, these attacks evidently failed to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects and would therefore be indiscriminate. Indiscriminate attacks that kill and injure civilians are war crimes. The evidence collected by Amnesty International also indicates the Israeli military failed to provide effective, or indeed any, warning – at minimum to anyone living in the locations that were hit – before launching the attacks.
“Entire families were wiped out in Israeli attacks even after they sought refuge in areas promoted as safe and with no prior warning from Israeli authorities. These attacks illustrate an ongoing pattern of Israeli forces brazenly flouting international law, contradicting claims by Israeli authorities that their forces are taking heightened precautions to minimize harm to civilians,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
Three of the attacks were carried out at night when civilian residents, including families displaced from other areas, were likely to be, and were, inside their homes in bed.
“Among those killed in these unlawful attacks were a baby girl who had not yet turned three weeks, a prominent 69-year-old retired physician, a journalist who welcomed displaced families into his house and a mother sharing a bed with her 23-year-old daughter. The testimonies that grieving survivors shared should serve as a reminder that these atrocity crimes in Gaza are a stain on the collective conscience of the world,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.
