GAZA: At a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, medical personnel have discovered at least 50 bodies of people who were murdered and buried by Israeli soldiers.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be in no mood to abide by the United Nations resolution demanding a ceasefire, stating he would fight against sanctions being placed on any Israeli army units, even as the Israeli military stated it was investigating reports about the recovery of fifty bodies.
The health ministry reports that 34,097 Palestinians have died in Gaza as a result of Israel’s assault, the majority of them were women and children.
In a related development, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported on Saturday that an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank resulted in the deaths of at least 14 Palestinians.
Ten civilians were reportedly murdered by the Israeli army during the operation at the Nur Shams camp.
One another mass grave
“There are mass graves excavated by the Israeli occupation inside the Nasser Medical Complex. The bodies of fifty martyrs were found in one of the pits yesterday, shocking us, stated Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for the Gaza civil defense organization.
“To determine the final number of martyrs, we are waiting for all graves to be excavated while we continue the search operation today.”
He said that torture had been used on some of the dead.
Mr. Bassal stated, “There were bodies with no clothes on them, which definitely indicates (the victims) faced torture and abuse.”
The “mass grave of those executed in cold blood and buried with military bulldozers in the hospital’s courtyard” was denounced by Hamas in a separate statement.
It stated that nearly fifty bodies had been found there.
Civil defense workers were observed exhuming bodies from the courtyard on Sunday; an AFP photographer said that several of the dead draped in white shrouds were later removed by families.
As rioting escalated in the occupied West Bank, first responders in the war-torn Palestinian area reported that Israel had carried out lethal strikes in Gaza.
The agency reported that an Israeli strike near the family’s home in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah resulted in the recovery of 13 bodies, the most of whom were children. There were rumors of other persons under the debris.
At least three persons were killed and others injured in an additional Israeli strike on a house in the Rafah neighborhood, according to the civil defense organization.
Umm Hassan Kloub, a 35-year-old resident, claimed that her kids cried out as they “woke up to a nightmare of an explosion.”
“Even the sound of Israeli aircraft doesn’t stop, and we live in constant terror,” she remarked.
“We have no idea how long we will live. Life is not like this.
Netanyahu promises to fend off penalties
Washington was preparing to slap penalties on Israel’s Netzah Yehuda unit for violating human rights during an operation in the occupied West Bank, according to a story published on Saturday by the news website Axios.
In a statement, Netanyahu declared, “I will fight it with all my strength if anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF.”
His comments followed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s suggestion of such actions in response to a question from an Italian reporter concerning rumors that his office had suggested reducing military assistance to an Israeli unit implicated in violent episodes in the occupied West Bank.
