GENEVA: Israel’s repeated use of heavy bombs in the densely-populated Gaza Strip indicates repeated violations of the laws of war, the UN said Wednesday, highlighting six attacks that killed at least 218 people.
In a fresh report, the United Nations rights office provided details on the six attacks, which it said were emblematic of a concerning pattern, involving the suspected use of up to 2,000-pound bombs on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market.
The rights office said it had verified 218 deaths in those attacks, which were carried out in the early months of the war that erupted in Gaza on October 7, but said it had information indicating the number of fatalities “could be much higher”.
“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
The report concludes that the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six attacks carried out between October 9 and December 2, suggested that Israel’s military had “repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war”, the statement said.
Among the attacks listed were the strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, in Gaza City on December 2 last year.
It caused destruction across an approximate diagonal span of 130 metres, destroying 15 buildings and damaging at least 14 others, it said.
The extent of the damage and the craters visible and seen on satellite imagery indicated that around nine 2,000-pound GBU-31 bombs were used, it said, adding that it had received information that at least 60 people were killed.
GBU-31s, along with 1,000-pound GBU-32s and 250-pound GBU-39s “are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures,” UN rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters.
Gaza’s deadliest war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,372 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
