The US State Department confirmed on Monday that Washington finds the photos shown of naked Gaza residents as “extremely disturbing.”
On Sunday, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the photos of detainees being stripped naked in Gaza “cannot be repeated,” noting that they were taken in Jabalia and Shuja’iya, and that some of these detainees were “armed.”
He added: “We stripped the detainees of their clothes in the northern Gaza Strip to make sure they were not booby-trapped,” as he put it.
On the other hand, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor website, commenting on the same footage, said that Israel arrested “dozens of Palestinian civilians after severely harassing them and completely stripping them of their clothes as a result of their siege for days inside two shelter centers in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.”
On Sunday, the Times of Israel newspaper published video footage that it said was leaked from the northern Gaza Strip, showing what is presumed to be one of the gunmen handing over his weapon while he and dozens of Palestinians surrendered to the Israeli forces.
The video shows the man walking slowly in front of a tank, holding the rifle and magazine above his head, before placing them on the ground.
The other Palestinians, wearing only underwear like him, carry their ID cards and stand on the other side of the street from the tank, a soldier shouting orders in Arabic through a loudspeaker.
Other video clips in recent days showed groups of men detained in similar conditions, stripped or half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed.
Men from a separate group of detainees released Saturday told The Associated Press they were beaten and deprived of food and water.
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2023-12-11 19:25:41
