U.N.

Calls for Inquiry Into Mass

Graves at 2 Gaza Hospitals
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/world/middleeast/gaza-mass-
grave.html

Palestinian officials said scores of bodies had been found, some shot in the head, at
one hospital after Israeli forces withdrew. Israel said it had dug up and reburied
some bodies in a search for hostages.

The Palestinian Civil Defense recovering bodies from what they are calling a mass
grave at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Sunday.Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via
Shutterstock
By Liam Stack, Hiba Yazbek and Nick Cumming-Bruce

reporting from Jerusalem and Geneva

 April 23, 2024Updated 3:25 p.m. ET

The United Nations’ human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent
investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals
in Gaza, including one discovered days ago over which Israeli and Palestinian
authorities offered differing accounts.

Palestinian Civil Defense said over the weekend that it had found a mass grave
containing 283 bodies on the grounds of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan
Younis, two weeks after a similar mass grave was found at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza
City.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency services

organization, said some of the bodies found in Khan Younis were handcuffed, shot in
the head or wearing detainee uniforms. He accused Israeli forces of killing and
burying them. Israel’s military declined to address those claims on Tuesday, and they
could not be independently verified.

On Tuesday, hours after the top U.N. human rights official called for an inquiry into
the mass graves, the Israeli military said that its forces had exhumed bodies that
were buried by Palestinians “in the area” of Nasser Hospital and examined them as
part of an effort to locate hostages. It did not comment on the report of the mass
grave at Al-Shifa.

The Israeli military declined to say how many bodies troops had exhumed and
reburied, how they died or whether the remains of any hostages had been found at
the site. It also did not say how the bodies had been examined to determine if they
were those of Israeli hostages.

“The examination was carried out respectfully while maintaining the dignity of the
deceased,” the statement said. “Bodies examined, which did not belong to Israeli
hostages, were returned to their place.”

It was not clear where the people discovered in the mass grave were originally buried.
But wartime chaos in Gaza has made it common for Palestinians to bury the dead
in mass graves or in courtyards and back gardens in a hurried way that might be
unthinkable in times of peace.

In January, an official at Nasser told journalists that hospital workers had buried
about 150 people in the hospital yard because nearby fighting had made it too
dangerous to travel to a cemetery.

In addition to the grave at Nasser Hospital, a mass grave was reported to have been
discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after an Israeli military operation there.
The U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday that the Gaza government had
reported that another 30 bodies were found in two graves there, 12 of which had
been identified. The office said it could not confirm the accounts.
Image
People mourn by the body of a missing relative unearthed at Nasser Hospital on
Tuesday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday that an international
investigation into the mass graves, not an Israeli one, was needed “given the
prevailing climate of impunity.”

“We feel the need to raise the alarm because clearly there have been multiple bodies
discovered,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for Mr. Türk.

The Israeli military raided Nasser Hospital on Feb. 15 to stop what it said was Hamas
activity, after ordering the hundreds of displaced people sheltering there to evacuate.

Although the military left the hospital in February, Israeli troops continued to
operate in the Khan Younis area before withdrawing from southern Gaza earlier this
month, leaving behind widespread destruction. The withdrawal allowed Palestinian
emergency services to begin searching for bodies of missing Palestinians.

Doctors at the hospital and the Gazan Health Ministry had said that some people
who tried to flee the Nasser compound during the Israeli raid were shot at by Israeli
soldiers, with some being killed or wounded. At the time, the Israeli military said in
response that it had “opened a secure route” to evacuate the civilians in the area but
did not respond to questions about reports that it had shot at Palestinians trying to
leave the hospital.

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul, Nader

Ibrahim from London and Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter covering the Israel-Hamas war from Jerusalem. More about
Liam Stack

Hiba Yazbek reports for The Times from Jerusalem, covering Israel and the occupied West
Bank. More about Hiba Yazbek

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