GENEVA(National Times)- The United Nations on Tuesday condemned intensifying Israeli attacks in Gaza that it said had killed at least 57 Palestinians in the past week, while Israeli forces in yet another strike killed a family of six in the area on Tuesday.
A so-called ceasefire agreed in October remains in place between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas, as it has failed to halt Israeli attacks.
“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.
He decried, “the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians”.
The Israeli attacks had killed “at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women” from July 13 to 20, he said.
According to him, the strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims “killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line”.
In attacks on July 17 and 18, for instance, he said the UN rights office had determined that 10 Israeli attacks in Gaza City, middle Gaza, north Gaza and Khan Younes had killed at least 21 Palestinians.
“In one of these attacks, on an apartment in Gaza City, five members of one family were killed together: both parents and three siblings, reportedly aged eight, 15, and 17,” he said.
The UN official stressed that “the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza”.
“Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime.” The spokesman also warned that the Israel’s constant moving of the “yellow line” westwards had left the Palestinian population in Gaza “trapped in an ever-shrinking area”.
This, he stressed, presents “a continuous threat to life as the Israeli military appears to routinely fire on Palestinians for mere presence in the vicinity of that line, in violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law”.
More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the truce took effect in October, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
The UN rights office has so far verified the killing of 685 Palestinians between last October and April, the UN official said.
Family of six killed by Israel
An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday killed a father, his wife and their four children in Gaza City, while setting their home ablaze, health officials said, in the latest deadly attack.
Medics said the Israeli strike on the family house in the Sabra neighbourhood killed the man, Firas Al-Masri, his wife, Salsabeel, and their three daughters and son.
A video which went viral on social media showed rescue workers struggling to put out fires in the house and bring out bodies in white shrouds.
Masri’s father, Abu Yusuf Al-Masri, said the explosion took place as they were asleep, as he lamented the loss of his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
“We were unable to save our grandchildren and children from the flames and the devastation. Around five or six (people) were martyred, most of them children and women, without mercy and without any prior warning,” he said, standing outside the family house.
“There is no relative calm and there is no safe place, at all,” the grey-bearded man added.
In four separate strikes since Friday, the Israeli military said it had killed four Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, three of whom it claimed had taken part in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Later on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike targeted a vehicle in central Gaza Strip, killing two people and wounding others, Palestinian medics said.
The truce halted full-scale fighting but has not stopped near-daily Israeli strikes.
Ban on Israeli settler products
The Netherlands government announced on Tuesday it would ban imports from Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli settlers from September 22.
The Netherlands will join Ireland, Belgium and Spain among European Union countries that have imposed restrictions on trade with territories occupied by Israeli settlers.
