Israeli army quadcopter drones ‘mercilessly target anyone walking’
Rafah city centre in Gaza lies deserted after most residents fled weeks of fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups.
Haitham Abu Taha, 30, spoke of the “danger of quadcopter drones that mercilessly target anyone walking” in the streets. “We’re afraid to move because we fear being killed. There is no more water or food. We are totally trapped, ” said Abu Taha.
Israel has intensified its use of the small drones, or quadcopters, to drop bombs on groups of people or houses and to “shoot to kill” Palestinians with mounted machine guns, said the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in a recent report.
“Many people were killed [by the quadcopters],” said Ismail Abu Shaar, 22. “The artillery, the shooting and the clashes [never stop].”
The Israeli military said on Monday that it’s “continuing intelligence-based targeted operations” in and around Rafah, adding it found “large amounts of weapons”.
A small weaponised Israeli drone known as a quadcopter
Israel ordered to provide information on prison for Gaza detainees
Israel’s top court ordered the government to provide information about the conditions inside a shadowy military facility where Palestinians from Gaza are detained.
Whistleblowers who worked at the facility and Palestinians who believe they were held there have reported that detainees are handcuffed and blindfolded at all times, fed only meagre snacks, held inside pens under harsh floodlights and not allowed outdoors.
The desert facility, called Sde Teiman, is the major detention centre where Israel has held thousands of Palestinians pulled from Gaza during large-scale raids. A coalition of rights groups is petitioning the high court to shut the facility down, alleging that it doesn’t meet Israel’s own standards for how detention facilities should operate during wartime.
Israel has barred the International Committee of the Red Cross from accessing all military detention facilities since the start of its war on Gaza.
‘I don’t have the words to describe the disgust’
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric physician from Canada who worked in Gaza, says she’s not shocked by the Save the Children report that said 21,000 kids are unaccounted for since Israel’s war began.
She said one time, while she was at work, an extended family of 40 was killed in an Israeli bombing.
“In 24 hours when I was there, we’d have entire families wiped off the civil registry. You’re talking about multiple-storey buildings levelled flat. Many children die instantly – burned beyond recognition, dismembered, all the horrific things we’ve been seeing,” she told Al Jazeera.
“What has shocked me about this report, however, is children being found in mass graves, with many showing signs of torture and summary executions. As well as ‘potential instances of people buried alive’. I don’t have the words to describe the disgust.”
