UN accuses Israel of war crimes over attacks on Gaza hospitals in new report

An inquiry carried out by the United Nations has accused Israel of war crimes and deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system during its war with Hamas.
Human rights experts have previously accused the country of war crimes in relation to the ongoing war in Hamas, and in 2021 the charity Amnesty International asked the International Criminal Court to investigate attacks that may amount to war crimes.
This latest UN report also alleges that Israel has carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying it had deliberately bombed hospitals, and carried out the crime against humanity of “extermination”.
The government in Israel previously said that its attacks on hospitals and schools in Gaza are targeting members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. At the same time, Hamas has denied it uses the locations as command centers.
When other similar reports have come out from the UN, Israel has accused it of bias, although it has yet to comment on this report.
The report was led by Navi Pillay and will be presented to the UN General Assembly on 30 October. Navi Pillay served as the former South African Human Rights Chief from 2008 to 2014.
Pillay says that Israeli security forces have “deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel” and that “Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”
The Commission of Inquiry has a broad mandate to collect evidence and identify the people responsible for these international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. It has a range of sources to back up the inquiry, including interviews with victims and witnesses, submissions, and satellite imagery.
The COI accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the early stages of the Gaza war and said that Israel’s actions also counted as crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses.
The term crimes against humanity is only reserved for the most severe international crimes deliberately and systematically carried out against citizens.
Hamas murdered 1,200 people in an attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 and took 251 women, children, and men as hostages. More than 42,060 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The charity Oxfam states on its website that according to the UN Children and Armed Conflict reports, “11,355 children have been killed so far this year” in Gaza.