On Saturday, Hamas officials in Gaza claimed to have discovered a mass grave with over 200 bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which had recently been the site of an Israeli military raid. They alleged that the deceased were buried in a mass grave by Israeli forces, but evidence suggests this claim is false. The bodies had been previously buried at the same location by Palestinians during the fighting between Israeli forces and terror operatives in the area.
The IDF has rejected Hamas’s allegation as “baseless.” They stated that while searching for Israeli hostages, they examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and had returned them to where they were buried after examination.
It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area. Experts have geo-located this burial site to the same location where Hamas officials claim to have discovered the new mass grave.
The IDF does not generally handle the bodies of slain Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. However, the United Nations rights office claimed that some of the bodies were “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.” The IDF responded by saying that during their operation in the Nasser Hospital area in recent months, troops examined corpses that had been buried by Palestinians on the medical center’s grounds, “as part of an effort to locate hostages.” They emphasized that they operated in a “targeted manner,” only where intelligence indicated Israeli hostages may have been buried.
The IDF stated that the examinations were conducted “in an orderly manner while maintaining the dignity of the deceased and in a respectful manner” and that the bodies were “returned to their place in an orderly and proper manner.” No bodies of hostages were found.
In late February, the IDF carried out a raid against Hamas in the Nasser Hospital area, capturing around 200 terror operatives who were hiding at the medical center. The military has conducted operations in hospitals on several occasions during the war, presenting evidence of their repeated use by Gaza terror groups to stage operations and hold hostages.
During the operation at Nasser, the army said it captured around 200 terror operatives and killed dozens. “The operation was carried out in a targeted manner and without harming the hospital, the patients and the medical staff,” the IDF said Saturday.
Hospitals are protected sites under international law, but they lose this protection if used for military purposes.
Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defense, told AFP Saturday that “civil defense crews are still recovering bodies from inside Nasser Medical Complex, and since Saturday bodies of nearly 200 martyrs have been retrieved.” Bassal said several of the recovered bodies had decomposed.
Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas government media office in Gaza, claimed a higher figure of 283 bodies found at the hospital. “We discovered mass graves inside Nasser Medical Complex” of people killed by the Israeli army, Thawabta claimed.
UN rights chief Volker Turk expressed horror at the destruction of the Nasser and Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves, according to a spokesperson.
Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the rights organization was raising the alarm because multiple bodies had been discovered. “Some of them had their hands tied, which of course indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and these need to be subjected to further investigations,” Shamdasani said.
Shamdasani said the UN human rights office had received reports that some of the victims in Nur Shams had been killed in apparent extrajudicial executions. The Hamas media office has accused Israel of executions, but has not shared visual or other evidence. Israel denies carrying out executions.
She added that the UN human rights office was working on corroborating Palestinian officials’ reports, including one that 30 bodies were found at Shifa. According to those reports, some of the bodies were buried beneath piles of waste and included women and older people.
Turk, who was represented by Shamdasani at a UN press briefing, also condemned Israeli strikes on Gaza in recent days, which he said had killed mostly women and children, apparently based on Hamas reports. He also warned against a full-scale incursion on Rafah, where around 1.2 million civilians live, saying it could lead to “further atrocity crimes.”
Israel has stated that it must conduct an offensive in Gaza to eliminate Hamas’ battalions and has outlined plans to evacuate civilians from the city prior to any operation.
