Above photo: AFP via Getty Images.
‘Due Reckoning Needed.’
The report reveals that 80 percent of the deaths occurred in residential buildings or homes bombed by Israel.
The majority of the casualties in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip have been women and children, according to a report released on 8 November by the UN Human Rights Office.
According to the report, nearly 70 percent of the confirmed number of dead are women and children, which “demonstrates an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare selected.” It also marks a “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” the report said.
It notes that 80 percent of the deaths took place in residential buildings or in homes. The 32-page report covers the period between November 2023 and April 2024. 44 percent of the 80 percent were women and children.
It adds that most of the verified deaths were of children between the ages of five and nine.
“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies and that, in the meantime, all relevant information and evidence are collected and preserved,” said UN human rights chief Volker Turk.
The official toll in Gaza has reached 43,508 deaths and 102,684 injuries as of 8 November.
More than 23 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Friday, with at least 17 of them in the north of the strip, according to Al Jazeera. WAFA news agency reported on 8 November that 39 have been killed and over 120 injured across Gaza in the last 24 hours.
The Israeli military has dropped more than 85,000 tons of bombs inside the besieged Gaza Strip since the start of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, according to a statement released by the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority on 6 November.
These include the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus munitions, which are prohibited under the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
Israel’s army is maintaining a more than one-month-long siege on the northern Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv is unofficially carrying out the Generals’ Plan, which aims to kill or expel the remaining residents of north Gaza in order to transform the area into an isolated military zone.