Palestinian Territories - Israel is conducting a horrific campaign of bloodshed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza City, burning their homes and properties, in a dangerous escalation of the genocide being committed against the residents of the Strip since 7 October 2023.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented shocking testimonies about a series of crimes systematically committed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including deliberate killings, extrajudicial executions, communication cutoffs, and intense shelling targeting areas and homes surrounding the al-Shifa Medical Complex. This complex has been under comprehensive military attack for the fifth consecutive day and serves as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinian families.
According to the testimonies, Israeli attacks also included strip-searching civilians and using them as human shields, raiding residential homes, conducting arbitrary arrests, and torturing residents, including women and children, who were forced to evacuate without the presence of male family members towards the central and southern areas of the Strip, before burning their homes.
Roula Saad stated, "We saw death before our eyes. They stormed the residential building where my family resides, and suddenly we found 50 armed soldiers in the middle of the living room. They ordered the men to strip naked and the women to follow them. They took us to the first floor, where they placed the men in a room next to us before taking them to al-Shifa Hospital. As for us women, they ordered us to go down and head towards the southern areas of the Strip."
The Israeli army raided my house, separated women from men, and instructed women to go alone with their children to the southern areas of the Strip, before setting the house on fire
Another witness (who requested anonymity) reported that the Israeli army raided her house during the iftar (fast-breaking meal), separated women from men, and instructed women to go alone with their children to the southern areas of the Strip, before setting the house on fire and burning it completely.
Euro-Med Monitor's team documented the execution by Israeli forces of the elderly man Fareej Wasef Al-Halaw, who suffered from several diseases including Alzheimer's, while he was present at the courtyard of the al-Shifa Medical Complex after being shot and left deliberately bleeding for several hours without receiving any medical assistance to save his life.
Members of the al-Sayed family, residing in the vicinity of the Shifa complex, reported that more than 50 Israeli soldiers raided their residential building on Wednesday during iftar, randomly firing and breaking doors, arresting all the men before expelling the women and children by forcing them to evacuate to the south of Gaza without the presence of male family members, then proceeding to burn the entire building.
Euro-Med Monitor received several pleas regarding severe torture and abuse suffered by patients and wounded individuals who were receiving treatment inside the al-Shifa Medical Complex, including besieging them, keeping them without treatment or food, dragging them on the ground and leaving them lying in front of tanks without clarifying their fate.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army also forced patients and wounded individuals inside the al-Shifa complex to evacuate, disregarding their health condition, directing them to the nearest health clinic or hospital amid the army's raid on the complex and its continued detention of medical staff for interrogation.
The Israeli army turned the Shifa complex into a military barracks and declared the surrounding area and streets leading to it as a military zone and a war zone amid continuous air strikes, artillery shelling, and gunfire from drones.
Euro-Med Monitor also documented dozens of extrajudicial killings and executions, arbitrary arrests in a humiliating manner compromising human dignity, amidst reports of several buildings being bombed in the complex and threats issued to evacuees through loudspeakers of being killed if they do not leave without providing safe passages, regardless of the difficult situations and elderly people whose lives are endangered.
Simultaneously, the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders to the residents of al-Rimal neighborhood, demanding all those present and displaced in the neighbourhood and in the vicinity of Shifa Hospital to evacuate the area immediately through Rashid Street southwest of the city, to the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi.
Israeli forces have also detained 400 individuals, including displaced persons, medical staff, and journalists, and subjected them to strip-searched and torture during field interrogations, before later dressing them in thin white clothes and transporting more than half of them under threat and in ways that compromised their dignity in military trucks and vehicles towards Israeli detention centers.
Euro-Med Monitor reiterates its warnings that the Israeli army has turned the Shifa complex into an open killing field for the fifth consecutive day amid extrajudicial killings and deliberate unlawful killings, deliberately endangering the lives of patients and wounded individuals inside it, whether by preventing any medical care and medication for them, or by starving and depriving them of water.
We emphasise that targeting what remains of the healthcare system in Gaza, exposing the lives of thousands of civilians including patients, wounded individuals, displaced families, medical teams, and journalists to direct targeting, stripping them of their civilian status, and separating families, all indicate a dangerous continuation of Israel's commission of genocide and the deepening of its catastrophic effects.
Euro-Med Monitor further warns of the danger of Israel's continued attempts to empty Gaza City and the north of its inhabitants, forcibly displacing them towards the south through forced eviction orders and under the weight of military operations targeting civilians, starvation, siege, and deprivation of basic necessities of life, including medical care. All of this falls within the framework of Israel's broader crime of forced displacement against all residents of the Gaza Strip.
We thus call on the international community for immediate and serious intervention to protect Palestinian civilians from the genocide being committed by Israel in the Strip for over five months, including the protection of patients, wounded individuals, displaced persons, medical teams, and journalists.
The international community must pressure Israel to stop its serious and ongoing crimes there, including its crimes against Shifa Hospital and all medical facilities, and its crimes of forced displacement and starvation, and ensure its compliance with international law and the International Court of Justice's decision.
