GENEVA: Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Friday urged an investigation into what he called Israel’s use of “high-impact explosive weapons” in Gaza, which he said was causing indiscriminate destruction in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
He said Israel must end its use of such weapons in the densely populated area, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have been displaced by fighting in the last month.
Turk was not specific about what weapons he was referring to. Asked for comment, the Israeli military said it was making checks and would respond later.
The World Health Organization too alleged that the biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip and another with children on life support was coming under bombardment. Twenty hospitals in Gaza were now out of action entirely, it said. Asked about the Gaza health ministry’s allegation of an Israeli strike on the courtyard of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said,”I haven’t got the detail on Al Shifa but we do know they are coming under bombardment.”
She said there was also “significant bombardment” on Rantissi hospital, the only hospital providing paediatric services in North Gaza.
At the same briefing, the UN humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said that there had been some “issues” getting aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which it said had been designed for pedestrians, not trucks.
Only 65 trucks carrying food, medicine, hygiene supplies and water, and seven ambulances, crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Wednesday, it said, which is a fraction of pre-conflict levels.
He urged Israel to re-open the Kerem Shalom crossing to allow more aid through. Israel has started four-hour battle pauses in the northern Gaza strip to enable Palestinians to flee the brunt of its retaliatory attacks on the enclave following a deadly cross-border rampage by Hamas militants on October 7 that left 1,400 dead and about 240 were taken hostage.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said an organisation in Syria launched a drone that hit a school in the southern Israeli city of Eilat and that it struck the group in response. The military did not say what organisation in Syria had launched the drone toward Eilat, on the Red Sea approximately 400 km from the nearest point in Syrian territory.