Deadly Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and razed entire districts as the United Nations said Israel’s total siege of the Palestinian enclave is banned under international law.
Gaza’s health ministry said the bombing had killed at least 830 people and wounded 4,250. The strikes intensified as night fell, shaking the ground and sending more columns of smoke and flames into the sky.
It comes after Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip yesterday, cutting off food, water and electricity supplies, and sparking fears of an increasingly desperate humanitarian situation. Hamas has threatened to execute the hostages if Israeli air strikes continued targeting Gaza residents without warning.
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Meanwhile, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has said people’s dignity and lives had to be respected as he called for all sides to defuse the “explosive powder-keg situation”.
“International humanitarian law is clear: the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects remains applicable throughout the attacks,” Turk said in a statement.
The siege risk seriously compounding the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza, including the capacity of medical facilities to operate, especially in light of increasing numbers of injured, the statement said.
“The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” Turk said.
Any restrictions on the movement of people and goods to implement a siege must be justified by military necessity or may otherwise amount to collective punishment, the statement added. At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.
