Israel genociding Palestinians one neighbourhood at a time: UN rapporteur

JERUSALEM: An independent, UN-appointed rights expert accused Israel of committing “genocide” in its Gaza war after an Israeli strike targeting a school on Saturday killed 93 people, according to local rescuers.

“Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighbourhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one safe zone at a time,” Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said on social media platform X.

Israel was carrying out such strikes against Palestinians using “US and European weapons”, Albanese said.

“May the Palestinians forgive us for our collective inability to protect them,” she added.

Israel on Saturday bombed a school in the Gaza city which housed about 250 Palestinians, mostly women and children displaced from other parts of the war-torn region. The attack killed around 100 people, mostly children, according to Gaza civil defence.

“The death toll is now between 90 to 100 and there are dozens more wounded. Three Israeli rockets hit the school that was housing displaced Palestinians,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has so far killed 39,790 Palestinians including more than 16,000 children, according to official figures from Gaza Health Ministry. However, a Lancet study suggests that the death tol in Gaza is undercounted and could be around 2 lakhs.

In a report issued in March, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to determine that Israel had committed several acts of “genocide” in its war in Gaza.

Israel denounced the report as an “obscene inversion of reality”.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.