“We can hardly keep up with the total death toll. It is like a whole village or hamlet has been wiped out.”
Israel is killing entire Palestinian families, across generations, in its genocidal attack on the Gaza Strip, according to an Associated Press report.
The AP investigation identified “at least 60 Palestinian families where at least 25 people were killed — sometimes four generations from the same bloodline.” This occurred in bombings between October and December, “the deadliest and most destructive period of the war,” the report said.
It said that nearly a quarter of those families lost more than 50 members then.
“Several families have almost no one left to document the toll, especially as documenting and sharing information became harder,” the report stated.
Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Geneva-based EuroMed Human Rights Monitor, told AP that dozens of his researchers in Gaza stopped documenting family deaths in March. By then, they had identified “over 2,500 with at least three deaths.”
“We can hardly keep up with the total death toll,” Abdu said. “It is like a whole village or hamlet has been wiped out.”
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Casualty Records
AP said its review included casualty records released by Gaza’s health ministry until March, online death notices, family and neighborhood social media pages and spreadsheets, witness and survivor accounts, as well as data from Airwars, a UK-based conflict watchdog.
The report documented the Mughrabi family in which more than 70 members were killed in a single airstrike in December; the Abu Najas family with over 50 were killed in October strikes, including at least two pregnant women; and the Doghmush clan in which at least 44 members in a strike on a mosque. In the following weeks, AP documented over 100 members of the clan killed. It also recorded over 80 members of the Abu al-Qumssan family killed by the Spring.
AP said that in the 51-day war of 2014, “the number of families that lost three or more members was less than 150.”
In this war, “nearly 1,900 families have suffered multiple deaths by January, including more than 300 that lost over 10 members in the first month of the war alone,” the report said, citing Gaza’s health ministry.
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Tragically, the report said, “entire families are buried in mass graves, hospital courtyards or beneath staircases where they were killed.”
The news agency also geolocated and analyzed 10 strikes, among the deadliest from October 7 to December 24, “and found they hit residential buildings and shelters with families inside.”
“In no case was there an obvious military target or direct warning to those inside, and in one case the family said they had raised a white flag on their building in a combat zone.”
Together, the report said, the strikes “killed more than 500 people, including the two bombings that wiped out the Salems and three others that killed 30 members of the al-Agha family.”
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‘Evidence’ of Direct Attacks
Since October, Amnesty International “has found evidence of direct attacks on civilians, unlawful and indiscriminate attacks in at least 16 Israeli strikes it investigated that killed 370 civilians, including 159 children and ‘decimated families’,” the report said.
In all, the AP record “included 2,700 killed from over 70 families, with some previously unknown details on their deaths, such as where they were killed or who died along with them.”
Omar Shabaan, an independent researcher and economist from Gaza, reportedly said that of Gaza’s 400,000 families, none has been spared of the tragedy of losing a member.
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“Everyone is targeted; families from all classes, poor, Bedouins, farmers, businessmen, wealthy people who are nationalist but unaffiliated with political action. There is no distinction,” said Shabaan. “It is becoming clear that this is a targeting of the social structure.”
The AP report said that “the killing of families across generations is a key part of the genocide case against Israel, now before the International Court of Justice.”
In addition, the International Criminal Court prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Over 37,000 Killed
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 37,372 Palestinians have been killed, and 85,452 wounded. Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
