283 corpses on hospital grounds?
EU calls for investigation into reports of mass graves
April 24, 2024, 2:50 p.m
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What is true? According to a Hamas authority, more than 280 bodies were found at a clinic site in the south of the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli accounts, they were buried by Palestinians. After the UN, the EU also wants to have the case investigated.
The EU has called for an independent investigation following reports of around 280 bodies in mass graves at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “This is something that forces us to demand an independent investigation into all suspicions and all circumstances,” said Peter Stano, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. The impression arose that “violations of international human rights may have occurred.”
On Monday, the civil protection authority controlled by the radical Islamic Hamas announced that it had discovered around 280 bodies in mass graves in the hospital in the past three days. Accordingly, a total of 283 bodies were found on the hospital premises.
According to Israeli reports, the bodies were not buried by Israeli soldiers, but by Palestinians. “The allegation that Israeli forces buried the bodies of Palestinians there is baseless,” said a statement distributed by the Israeli embassy in Geneva on Tuesday evening.
Israeli soldiers only examined the bodies in the grave in search of Israeli hostages. “The investigation was carried out carefully and exclusively in locations where intelligence indicated there may have been hostages,” the embassy said. The dignity of the deceased was preserved. The bodies of Palestinians were returned to the same location.
The UN is also calling for independent investigations
UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk also called for “independent, effective and transparent investigations” in which international investigators should be involved given the “prevailing climate of impunity” in a statement on Tuesday.
The Israeli army carried out several operations on the grounds of hospitals in the Gaza Strip during its military operation in the Gaza Strip following the major Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th. Israel accuses Hamas of using the hospitals as command centers and weapons caches and the civilians there as human shields.
Hamas denies the allegations. Since the beginning of the war, numerous civilians displaced from the north have sought refuge in hospitals in the south of the Palestinian territory. Hamas triggered the war in the Gaza Strip with its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7th. Since then, Israel has taken massive military action in the Gaza Strip.