Interim report from the United Nations on people killed in the Gaza Strip

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Friday publish a report on the situation in the <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/us-wing-movement-allegedly-provides-arms-to-hamas-page-all/" title="US Wing Movement Allegedly Provides Arms to Hamas Page all”>Gaza Strip during the first six months of the Israeli invasion, so between the beginning of November 2023 and the end of April 2024. During that time the UN officials could confirmed the killing of 8,119 Palestinian people, mostly as a result of attacks by the Israeli army: almost half (44 percent) were minors, and another 26 percent were women.

There is a reason why this data is very different from the one usually used by the mainstream international media, which is provided by the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip (which is controlled by Hamas, but still considered. generally reliable): according to ministry data, so far, more than 43 thousand people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, and at the end of April, i.e. around the same period considered by the report, there were more than 34 thousand.

The same report from the United Nations cites figures from the Ministry of Health of the Strip without denying them, and explains that the difference with its findings is that OHCHR staff must obtain confirmation from three sources different to determine death, such as for example. hospital medical record, a relative and a certificate of a member of the United Nations or an NGO present at the site. The data from the Gaza Ministry of Health instead comes from leaflets coming from hospitals and other sources in the area.

The director of the United Nations office for human rights in the Palestinian territory, Ajith Sunghay, he told reporters that the calculations in the report are provisional and that the final budget may be similar to the budget of the Ministry of Health in Stry: “The numbers are, obviously, very large compared to previous years, so we have to time to catch up and prove.”

The report says that among the 8,119 people who have been confirmed killed, the three most representative age groups are, in order: children aged 5 to 9, people aged 10 to 14 and those aged 0 to 4. The youngest person killed among those named by the OHCHR was a one-day-old baby, and the oldest was a 97-year-old woman.

The number of women killed is almost equal to the number of men. This is a change from Israel’s repeated bombings of the Strip in 2021 and 2014, when mostly men in their 20s and 30s were killed (although the number of people killed was killed has already increased in 2021 compared to 2014).

Of the more than 8,000 people killed cited in the report, 93 percent were killed while in residential or similar buildings and 88 percent died in attacks that killed more than five people. According to the report, the high number of casualties per attack is largely due to the fact that the Israeli army uses “weapons with wide effects in densely populated areas.” Some people (whose number has not been measured) may have been killed by missiles fired by Palestinian armed groups that did not achieve their desired goal.

In addition to the number of people killed, the report also speaks with concern about the number forced movements of the Palestinian population by Israel, the many attacks on hospitals carried out by its army and the killing of several journalists. He also says that UN officials have been able to confirm the use of Israeli weapons white phosphorus weapon (a substance sometimes used in conjunction with bombs, which have toxic or flammable effects), and the injury of some civilians, which already reported by various NGOs and independent studies. The use of white phosphorus is not always illegal under international law, however he is used against civilians.

– Listen: Globe – Inside Gaza, by Sami al-Ajrami

The report appears again, as other agencies and representatives of the United Nations have done in recent months even more preciselythe possibility that Israel is doing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people. This can be supported on the basis of the systematic system by which the Israeli army carries out indiscriminate attacks on the Gaza Strip, together with “repeated statements from Israeli officials that the end of the conflict is controlled by the complete destruction of Gaza and the t -way out of existence. Palestinian people.” Israel under investigation for genocide at the International Court of Justice and some of its ministers is under investigation for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

– Read also: A year of war in Gaza