GAZA, (PIC)
According to Palestinian human rights organizations, the massacre committed by the Israeli occupation army in the At-Tabe’een School in Gaza City at dawn Saturday is the result of the Israeli genocidal war launched with Western complicity.
The organizations stated that the massacre, in which 100 citizens were martyred and dozens injured, is a blatant expression of Israel’s declared policy to continue committing such horrific crimes, 10 months after the wide-ranging military attack on the Gaza Strip.
Details of the massacre
According to the joint statement of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the Al-Mezan Center, and the Al-Haq Foundation issued on Saturday, the massacre occurred around 4:40 am on Saturday when the Israeli aircraft fired three guided missiles at a building that housed a ground floor mosque and a first floor shelter for women and children, inside the At-Tabe’een School for Religious Sciences, which sheltered thousands of displaced persons on Al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City, while hundreds of them were performing the dawn prayer.
The bombardment targeted the building, resulting in the martyrdom of dozens of the displaced and worshipers, including entire families, mostly children and women, most of whom were torn to shreds and charred bodies. Dozens of others were injured seriously including cases of amputations.
According to medical sources, a large number of martyrs, many of whom were torn limbs and mutilated bodies, arrived at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. 70 of them were identified, while the remains of about 10 other martyrs remained unidentified, and a large number of victims are still under the rubble.
Dozens of injured people also arrived, including a large number with severe burns and amputations, some of whom died in the hospital. Therefore, the number of victims is expected to rise, especially with the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip, as the Al-Ahli Hospital is the only one operating partially and with limited capabilities in Gaza City.
A lawyer from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, who went to the school after it was targeted to document the crime, reported that the initial death toll, according to medical sources, reached 97 martyrs, some of whom were transferred to Baptist Hospital (Al-Ahli) Hospital, and some were buried in the school, noting the extreme difficulty in identifying the bodies as they were dismembered and mutilated.
Impunity
According to human rights institutions, this massacre is a result of the continued policy of impunity for the Israeli occupation regime and the complicity of some Western countries in the serious violations against the Palestinian people by arming Israel with weapons and ammunition, coupled with the lack of international will to compel the occupying state to implement the decisions of the International Court of Justice to stop the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
The institutions expressed their shock at the sight of the charred remains of dozens of martyrs scattered in the prayer hall and the school courtyard, noting that the missiles fired towards the school were of the destructive and incendiary type used by the occupation forces in the genocide against the Palestinian people, which are supplied to them by the United States and Europe.
Refuting the occupation’s claims
The human rights groups refuted Israel’s claim that it uses smart bombs in its military attacks, stressing that this is a false claim and reflects Israel’s disregard for the entire world, as it continues with collective killings and provides unfounded justifications that contradict the facts.
They said, “We are facing a clear-cut crime that confirms the occupation’s approach of deliberately committing genocide, by a decision from the political level,” referring to the statement of the extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who publicly said that “killing two million Palestinians in Gaza by starvation may be fair and moral to bring back the Israeli prisoners from the Strip.”
The repeated Israeli justifications about targeting individuals from Hamas or fighters are mere worthless claims, according to the human rights organizations, stressing that there is no justification whatsoever for using this disproportionate and unnecessary force that led to the martyrdom of a large number of civilians inside a school sheltering the displaced.
Israel, as announced by its army, has accurate intelligence information about the movements and locations of individuals, and has precision missiles dedicated to targeting individuals. However, it has used massive firepower and deliberately targeted at the time of the gathering of worshippers for the dawn prayer, indicating its intention to inflict the largest number of casualties.
The human rights groups said that targeted killings are, in principle, crimes that violate the rules of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
Repeated crimes
They added that targeting displacement centers set up inside schools is not an isolated incident, but rather an expression of a systematic Israeli policy. The occupation forces have intensified the targeting of displacement centers set up in schools in the Gaza City since the beginning of the current month, bombing 10 schools and killing and injuring dozens of the displaced people inside. This indicates their aim to destroy all displacement centers and forcibly displace the displaced towards the south of the Gaza Valley, noting that the crimes of killing and bombing the displaced and others are ongoing in southern Gaza Strip as well.
Since the beginning of the Israeli military attack in October 2023, the Israeli aircraft have bombed about 160 schools used as displacement centers, killing hundreds and injuring thousands, in addition to targeting the tents of the displaced and their gatherings, including within the so-called humanitarian area defined by the occupation forces in the outskirts of Khan Yunis and Rafah.
The human rights groups called on the countries that supply Israel with weapons and ammunition, especially the United States of America, which provides the political, legal and financial cover for the occupying state and is the largest supplier of weapons and ammunition to Israel, to stop this immediately.
They stressed that all these countries are partners by all standards in the crime of genocide and other crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.
