Relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the hit area and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.
”This is a shocking incident,” said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
”The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded,” he said.
In unusually strong terms, the neutral agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident.
In a written response, the Israeli army said it works in coordination with international aid bodies assist civilians and that it ”in no way intentionally targets civilians”.
The Israeli offensive launched in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on December 27 to end rocket attacks by Islamic militants has drawn increasing international criticism over mounting civilian casualties.
Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances and ICRC officials managed to reach several houses in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City on Wednesday after seeking access from Israeli military forces since last weekend, the ICRC statement said.
The rescue team ”found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses”, the ICRC said.
”They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses,” it said.
In another house, the team found 15 survivors of Israeli shelling including several wounded, it said. Israeli soldiers posted about 80m away ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do, it said.
The ICRC said it had been informed that there were more wounded sheltering in other destroyed houses in the area.
”The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuated the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable,” it said.
In all, it evacuated 18 wounded and 12 others who were exhausted, including the children, by donkey cart. This was because large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the immediate area.
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, warring parties are obliged to do everything possible to search for, collect and evacuate the wounded and sick without delay, it said.
Dominik Stillhart, ICRC deputy director of operations, declined to say explicitly whether the Israeli inaction constituted a war crime.
”Clearly, it is [for] the International Criminal Court — not for the ICRC — to say whether this is or is not a war crime,” he said, referring to the Hague tribunal.
Ambulances must be given ”round-the-clock” access to the wounded throughout Gaza, Stillhart told a news briefing. ”We cannot wait for the next suspension of hostilities for the wounded to be evacuated and brought to hospital.”
The Israeli army said any serious allegations would need to be investigated properly after a formal complaint was received, ”within the constraints of the military operation taking place”.
White phosphorus
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Israel is using white phosphorus shells, the Times newspaper reported on Thursday, citing what it said
was photographic evidence despite Israeli denials.
The daily said it had identified stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells from photographs taken of Israel artillery units on the border with Gaza this week.
The report said Palestinian citizens had suffered burns caused by the weapons.
”The use of WP against civilians is prohibited under international law,” the newspaper noted. It said it had identified pale blue shells marked with the designation M825A1 as a US-made WP munition.
Phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen and, according to the paper, is being used by the Israeli military to create smokescreens to allow its ground forces to operate.
Medics in Gaza told the newspaper they had been struggling to treat patients with unusual burns, which they suspected had been caused by white phosphorus.
”The burns are very unusual. They don’t look like burns we have normally seen. They are third-level burns that we can’t seem to control,” the Times quoted medic Muhammad Azayzeh (28) as saying in Gaza City.
It cited an Israeli military spokesperson as insisting the M825A1 identified by the paper was not a WP shell: ”This is what we call a quiet shell — it is empty, it has no explosives and no white phosphorus. There is nothing inside it.
”We shoot it to mark the target before we launch a real shell. We launch two or three of the quiet shells which are empty so that the real shells will be accurate. It’s not for killing people.”
But Neil Gibson of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets told the Times that the M825A1 was a WP round.
”The WP does not fill the shell but is impregnated into 116 felt wedges which, once dispersed [by a high-explosive charge], start to burn within four to five seconds.
”They then burn for five to ten minutes. The smokescreen produced is extremely effective,” he said. – Reuters, AFP