Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a detailed investigation into an Israeli air strike that killed 106 Palestinians in a six-storey apartment building on October 31, 2023, describing the attack as an “apparent war crime”.
Witnesses said 350 or more people were staying in the Engineers’ Building, just south of the Nuseirat refugee camp, when four aerial munitions struck the building within about 10 seconds, without warning, at about 2:30 pm local time. The building was completely demolished.
“This strike inflicted massive civilian casualties without an apparent military target – one of scores of attacks causing overwhelming carnage,” said Gerry Simpson, associate crisis and conflict director at HRW.
The 106 Palestinians, including 54 children, killed in the attack were playing football, charging their phones in the downstairs grocery store, or simply seeking shelter after fleeing their own homes, said Simpson.
UNRWA employee Karam al-Sharif holds one of his 18-month-old twin boys killed in the October 31 Israeli air strike on the Engineers’ Building that HRW says killed at least 106 civilians, including 10 of al-Sharif’s relatives
Gaza detainees routinely losing limbs because of handcuffs: Israeli doctor
An Israeli doctor at a field hospital within a detention centre holding hundreds of Palestinians warned conditions there are catastrophic and in gross violation of Israeli law, reports Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
In a letter to senior Israeli officials, the doctor noted detainees at the Sde Teiman detention centre, near the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, are shackled by all four limbs 24 hours a day, causing severe injuries to their hands and legs that often require amputation.
In addition, detainees are regularly blindfolded, fed only through a straw, denied toilet access, and undergo major surgeries without proper medical care, the unnamed doctor said in the letter cited by Haaretz.
“The facilities’ operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law,” it said.
“This makes all of us – the medical teams and you, those in charge of us in the health and defence ministries, complicit in the violation of Israeli law. And perhaps worse for me as a doctor, in the violation of my basic commitment to patients, wherever they are, as I swore when I graduated 20 years ago.”
Detained Palestinians sit on a street in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip
Israel releases at least 100 Palestinian prisoners, many with injuries
Israeli authorities have released 101 Palestinian prisoners who are from the Gaza Strip back into the besieged and bombarded territory, according to Gaza’s General Administration of Crossings and Borders.
Many of those released were taken to medical facilities in Rafah, where they are being treated for fractures or other injuries they suffered from being beaten while in custody, according to a medical source cited by Al Jazeera Arabic.