GENEVA, (PIC)
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has called on the international community to pressure Israel to reveal the fate of dozens of Palestinian women who were kidnaped from homes and shelter centers in the Gaza Strip and to end the enforced disappearance of about 3,000 other civilians, including children.
“We have received information about the detention of hundreds of Palestinians from Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City by the Israeli army during the past few days, including dozens of women who were taken to the Yarmouk Stadium. Their headscarves were removed by soldiers and they were also searched and exposed to explicit harassment, beating and abuse,” Euro-Med said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The males, including minors as young as 10 years old and elderlies over the age of 70, were forced to get completely naked, except for their lower underwear (boxer shorts). They were forced to line up in a humiliating way in front of the women who were detained in a nearby spot inside the stadium,” Euro-Med added.
Euro-Med pointed out that hundreds of other detained civilians from Jabalia al-Balad and its refugee camp in northern Gaza and the eastern neighborhoods of Gaza also received the same inhumane treatment from Israeli soldiers.
According to information, including video footage and testimonies, Euro-Med obtained recently, the Israeli forces tend to blow up doors and throw grenades through them during their raids on homes and shelter centers before they violently storm these places and shoot dead a number of civilians inside them with no reason or if they hear anyone of them talk. Afterwards, they take the remaining civilians outdoors and force the males to strip naked to their underwear while searching and harassing the women, and then they embark on verifying the identities of all the detainees.
Euro-Med highlighted that the Israeli army continues to detain dozens of females, including elderly women — one of them over 80 years of age — as well as mothers with their infants and toddlers, and minor girls.
Euro-Med also received testimonies affirming that a number of female detainees were threatened with rape and one woman identified as Hadeel Youssef was herded with a group of naked male detainees into the back of a truck.
