Today's Edition
Geneva (AFP)
Israel’s repeated use of heavy bombs in the densely-populated Gaza Strip indicates repeated violations of the laws of war, the UN said on Wednesday, highlighting six attacks that killed at least 218 people.
In a fresh report, the United Nations rights office provided details on the six attacks, which it said were emblematic of a concerning pattern.
They involved the suspected use of up to 2,000-pound bombs on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market.
“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Among the attacks listed in Wednesday’s report were the strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, in Gaza City on December 2 last year.
The extent of the damage and the craters visible and seen on satellite imagery indicated that around nine 2,000-pound GBU-31 bombs were used, it said, adding that it had received information that at least 60 people were killed.
GBU-31s, along with 1,000-pound GBU-32s and 250-pound GBU-39s “are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures”, UN rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters.
“Given how densely populated the areas targeted were, the use of an explosive weapon with such wide area effects is highly likely to amount to our prohibited indiscriminate attack.”
When committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with an official state or organisational policy, it “may also implicate crimes against humanity”, it said.
