Gaza authorities say more bodies have been found in mass graves

Two weeks ago, a similar mass grave was discovered at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and a mass grave was also discovered at Al-Nasr Hospital.

A statement this week quoted Ravina Shamdasani, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as saying some of the bodies were found with their hands “tied and their clothes stripped”.

Reports from Gaza authorities could not be independently verified and the group did not provide evidence for its claims.

At least one body recovered since Sunday was found wearing blue medical scrubs. The video was posted on social media by photographer Haseeb Alwazir. The man’s hands are seen tied together. The body lay next to other bodies exhumed from a mass grave in Palm Grove.

Doctors at the hospital and Gaza’s health ministry said some of those who tried to flee Nasser’s compound during the Israeli attack. No one was killed or wounded by Israeli forces.

Although this account could not be independently confirmed, multiple videos verified by The Times showed the man who had been shot lying on the ground outside the north gate; Other demonstrations included water bottles being carried across the street to the hospital building by ropes to avoid walking down the path where the victims were shot.

At the time, the Israeli military said it had “opened a safe way” to evacuate civilians from the area, but did not respond to questions about reports that Israel had opened fire on Palestinians trying to leave the hospital.

Erica Guevara Rosas, Senior Director of Research and Advocacy at Amnesty International, said human rights investigators and forensic experts needed immediate access to ensure evidence was preserved in the graves to ensure accountability for violations of international law.

“Without a proper investigation to determine how these deaths occurred or what violations took place, we may never discover the horrific truth behind these mass graves,” he said in a statement. statement.

Israeli troops left Al-Nasr Hospital in late February after continuing operations in Khan Younis and withdrew from southern Gaza earlier this month. The withdrawal allowed Palestinian emergency services and families to begin searching for the missing.

Jihad al-Bayuk, 26, said he killed his brother after an Israeli drone strike on his home in Khan Yunis, Nasser, on January 24. He was buried in Nasser’s plot. “I made sure to remember this place so I could come back later and give him a decent burial in a real cemetery,” Bayuk, 26, said by phone Wednesday.

He said when he returned after Israeli forces withdrew from the area, he could not find his brother’s body or the palm tree he had used to mark its location. So he starts digging every day with a group of others to find the body of his loved one.

“The excavation went on for several days,” Bayuk said, before his brother’s body was discovered on Monday in a different place than where he was buried. He said two of the three layers of plastic he was wrapped in were missing and the third was torn but held together with plastic clips.