War crimes committed in Israel-Palestine conflict: rights group

The death toll from five days of fighting between Hamas and Israel has risen sharply overnight with officials reporting over 1,100 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 1,200 Israelis shot dead in settlements close to the enclave.

Israel kept up its bombardment of Gaza on Wednesday, hammering entire neighborhoods in the besieged enclave in retaliation to Hamas’s mass operation into Israel.

Hamas fighters breached Israel’s high-tech security fence early Saturday morning under the cover of rocket fire, entering several Israeli settlements close to Gaza.

Hamas officials stated that the unprecedented, coordinated attack was launched in response to Israel’s desecration of Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site, and increased state-sanctioned Israeli settler violence across the occupied Palestinian territories.

Hamas said two of its top officials have been killed in the fighting, while Israel's military said it is largely back in control across more than a dozen Israeli settlements, adding that the bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas infiltrators had been found.

HRW documents war crimes

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said it is apparent that very serious war crimes are being committed by both sides of the conflict.

“Hamas’ assault clearly involved shooting civilians en masse, deliberate killings of civilians, taking of civilians as hostages. These are war crimes, they are not justified by any set of circumstances and those are clear violations,” Shakir told TRT World.

In its infiltration, Hamas is reported to have taken hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers hostage into Gaza, warning, on Monday, it would start killing hostages every time Israel launches a strike on a civilian target in Gaza without a warning.

In response to Hamas’ attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to turn Gaza into a “deserted island” and the Israeli military ordered a “total” blockade of the already besieged Gaza, where about 2.3 million people live in a desperate conditions.

Israel has launched unrelenting airstrikes on Gaza, killing more than 800 people and leaving thousands more injured.

Israel has also cut electricity and water supply and block the entry of food, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza, making it difficult for hospitals to deal with the steady stream of injured people.

Shakir said Israel’s total blockade is a war crime.

“It is collective punishment for the acts of individuals. As well as starvation [used] as a tool of war. These are quite serious war crimes under international law,” he said.

“We’re also seeing Israel rain down explosive weapons in the densely populated Gaza strip, attacks that wipe out entire families, that destroy high rise buildings that have homes and offices… They are deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure without an apparent military target.”

'Violence at an unfathomable scale'

Israel claims that its attacks on Gaza are to target Hamas hideouts and infrastructure, however, airstrikes on residential neighborhoods have displaced over 263,934 Palestinians from their homes, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Since October 7, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has recorded both collateral and direct damage to at least 18 of its facilities including schools sheltering displaced civilians. It said the UN estimates that over 137,000 people are sheltering in over 80 UNRWA schools across Gaza.

UN locations are designated deconfliction zones, meaning Israel has been provided with GPS coordinates of all UN facilities, knowing they hold internally displaced people (IDPs).

Israel’s strikes have targeted nine health institutions, including the Ministry of Health building, the Rimal Clinic, and the International Eye Center, and bombed 15 ambulances, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said.

Six health workers and eight journalists have been killed while 15 health workers and 20 journalists have been wounded, the ministry added.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday accused Israel of using phosphorus incendiary weapons in its bombing on Gaza.

Rami Abdo, the founder of the European Observatory for Human Rights, posted a video clip on the X platform of what he said was Israel’s use of phosphorus bombs.

Under the1980 Geneva Convention, the use of incendiary bombs is forbidden in densely populated areas in order to prevent mass casualties.

"We’re seeing violence really at an unfathomable scale… and it appears, there are signs that things could only get worse in the days ahead,” Shakir told TRT World.