GENEVA, Switzerland — The
UN rights chief voiced alarm Thursday at the number of Palestinian
children killed and wounded this month and demanded those responsible be
brought to account.
اضافة اعلان
Last week saw three
days of intense aerial and artillery bombardment of the Gaza Strip by
Israeli occupation forces.
“Inflicting hurt on
any child during the course of conflict is deeply disturbing,”
Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.
“The killing and
maiming of so many children this year is unconscionable.”
Her office said 19
Palestinian children had been killed in the Palestinian territories in the
recent Israeli violence, taking the total number this year to 37.
The latest child
casualty was 10-year-old Liyan Al-Shaer, who died in a Jerusalem hospital
Thursday from a head wound sustained in the latest round of Israeli violence on
Gaza.
Seventeen children
were killed during the Israeli assault on the strip from August 5 to 7, while
two more were killed on Tuesday in raids by Israeli occupation forces in the
West Bank.
The UN Human Rights Office OHCHR said that among the 48 Palestinians killed in last week’s Gaza
conflict. They included the 17 children.
Of the 360
Palestinians reported injured, 151 were children, OHCHR said.
Three Gazan
children are on life-support systems at a hospital in Israeli-occupied East
Jerusalem, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Thursday.
“In a number of
incidents, children were the majority of casualties,” Bachelet’s office said.
“Launching an
attack which may be expected to incidentally kill or injure civilians, or
damage civilian objects, in disproportionate manner to the concrete and direct
military advantage anticipated, is prohibited,” she said.
“Such attacks must
stop.”
Bachelet’s office
said that, also in violation of international humanitarian law, Palestinian
resistance groups launched hundreds of rockets and mortars.
Bachelet called for
investigations into all incidents where any person was killed or injured.
“An almost total
lack of accountability persists in the occupied Palestinian territory,” she
said.
“Whether for violations of international humanitarian law by
all parties in hostilities in
Gaza, or for recurring Israeli violations of
international human rights law and the law of occupation in the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem.”
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