Amnesty International announced that three Israeli air strikes in the central and southern Gaza Strip led to the killing of 44 Palestinian civilians, including 32 children, in April, calling on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into “war crimes.”
The organization stated that these raids took place on April 16 in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, and on April 19 and 20 in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Amnesty International official Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement, “These devastating strikes destroyed families and claimed the lives of 32 children,” stressing that the organization’s investigation provides “basic evidence indicating unlawful attacks attributed to the Israeli army.”
Amnesty based its conclusions on interviews with 17 survivors and witnesses, visits to a hospital where the wounded were treated, as well as photographs of shrapnel from the weapons used.
She said that in the three cases, “the organization did not find any evidence of the presence of military targets in or around the sites targeted by the Israeli army,” noting that it has not yet received responses to its questions from the Israeli army.
According to Amnesty International, the April 16 raid on Al-Maghazi hit a street where children were playing table football, killing 10 of them, aged between 4 and 15, and 5 men.
In Rafah, on April 19, an air bomb hit the home of Abu Radwan, a retired employee, killing 9 family members, including 6 children, according to the organization.
On April 20, a raid destroyed the Abdel-Al family’s home in eastern Rafah, killing 20 people, including 16 children and 4 women, and wounding two other children.
Amnesty International wrote that “the International Criminal Court must open a war crimes investigation” into these three strikes.
She stressed that “the cases documented here show a clear pattern of attacks that occurred over the past seven months, in which the Israeli army violated international law, killed Palestinian civilians with complete impunity, and demonstrated a callous disregard for human life.”
