The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) condemned the occupation’s exhumation of Palestinian cemeteries in Gaza – today, Saturday – and the theft of the bodies of the martyrs from them, and their transfer to an unknown destination.
The movement said that this “heinous crime expresses the brutality of this fascist army,” calling on countries, governments, and concerned human rights and international institutions to “stand up to their humanitarian and moral responsibilities, and take serious and urgent action to condemn and expose these escalating crimes.”
The government media office in Gaza revealed that the Israeli occupation army exhumed approximately 1,100 graves in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood cemetery, east of Gaza City, adding that the occupation mechanisms “razed them and removed the bodies of the martyrs and the dead from them.”
The office explained in a statement that after exhuming the graves and bulldozing the cemetery, the occupation army stole approximately 150 bodies of the martyrs that had been recently buried, then transported them to an unknown destination.
The media office condemned “in the strongest terms this heinous crime that demonstrates the brutality of the immoral occupation,” expressing its astonishment at the “silence” of international organizations.
He pointed out that this crime “raises suspicions again about another crime, which is the crime of stealing the organs of martyrs, which we referred to in previous statements.”
He also pointed out that the occupation repeated this crime more than once, the last of which was the delivery of 80 bodies of former martyrs that it had stolen from the Gaza and North Gaza governorates, tampered with them, and delivered them mutilated and buried in Rafah, refusing to provide any information about them, according to the statement.
For 92 days, the Israeli occupation army has launched an aggression against Gaza, leaving – as of Saturday – 22,722 martyrs and 58,166 injured, most of them children and women, massive destruction of infrastructure and an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” according to official Palestinian and UN sources.