UN rights body launches probe into Israeli offensive in Gaza

Silhouette of Muslim students protesting behind a Palestinian flag during a rally in support of Palestinians, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 23 July 2014. Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA

GAZA CITY // The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday agreed to investigate Israel’s Gaza offensive.

The move will put Israel under intense international scrutiny following the conflict, which has killed more than 680 Palestinians.

Twenty-nine members of the council backed the resolution, drafted by Palestinian representatives. The United States cast the 46-member council’s sole dissenting vote, while European countries abstained.

The decision comes as fighting between militants in Gaza and Israel continued on Wednesday with its military attacking a hospital as part of a brutal air and ground campaign in the territory.

In a statement to Palestinian news agency Maan, Israel’s military said it attacked the Wafa rehabilitation hospital “in light of several occasions in which fire was opened” by Palestinian militants and “despite repeated warnings against such activities” before opening fire. Israeli forces also attacked the facility on Thursday, forcing doctors and 14 paralysed patients, among others, to evacuate.

On Monday, artillery had killed four people and wounded 60 more at another health care facility, the Al Aqsa hospital, in the central Gaza city of Deir Balah. The military also said that “warnings have been conveyed directly to the hospital administration and other Palestinian officials”.

The fighting between Israel and Hamas militants that began on July 8 has seen scores of Palestinian rockets — 1,790, according to the military — fired at Israel, which has pounded Gaza with airstrikes, shelling and ground incursion and killed a large number of civilians.

Its forces also have met stiff resistance by Hamas fighters, who have fought a guerrilla-like campaign that has killed at least 32 Israeli troops.

Three were killed while fighting in Gaza on Wednesday, Israel’s military said in the statement.

The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, a militant faction aligned with Hamas, claimed responsibility for the killings, which it said took place in the southern city of Khan Younis, Maan reported.

Hamas’s armed wing also said it attacked an Israeli tank in northern Israel, the news agency reported.

“Our fighters at 10am today bombed a ‘Merkavah’ tank in eastern Jabalia,” Hamas said in a statement, referring to a refugee camp in north Gaza.

A foreign national working at an agricultural compound in southern Israel was killed on Wednesday by mortar fire from Gaza, raising the number of Israeli civilians killed to three.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Gaza district of Shujaieh, ambulance crews used an apparent lull in fighting in the area to attempt to pull out bodies from the destruction wrought by massive Israeli bombardment on Sunday that killed over 66 people.

But continued sniper fire and at least one Israeli shell that exploded near the clean-up crews forced journalists and emergency personnel to leave the area shortly after entering.

Families displaced from the fighting in Shujaieh were eager to re-enter to gather their belongings and, in some places, collect the bodies of loved ones who had died.

“He’s still in there! He still in there!” cried Umm Hamouda, 45, referring to the body of her nephew, 35-year-old Abed.

Rocket attacks on their home on Sunday and Monday tore up his right arm, but the inability of emergency responders to collect him, for fear of incoming Israeli fire, caused him to bleed to death, she said.

“We were desperate to get him help, but there was nothing we could do. He’s gone!” she said.

Rendered homeless and displaced, she and 65 members of her immediate and extended family are living in an empty shop in downtown Gaza City.

* with reporting from Agence France-Presse and Reuters