UN Human Rights Office denounces war crimes in conflict between Israel and Hamas

MADRID, 27 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has accused Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) of perpetrating actions in the framework of their current conflict that would constitute war crimes and has called for an immediate end to violence to try to "find an alternative to this carnage.

Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in response to the attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7, "nowhere is safe" in Gaza, which is why the High Commissioner's spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, has criticized that the Israeli Army has requested the Gazan population to abandon certain areas while maintaining a tight blockade that prevents not only the entry of supplies into the Strip but also the flight of the population.

The forced transfer of citizens, he has warned, represents a war crime, as can indiscriminately bombing densely populated areas or protected facilities and exercising a kind of "collective punishment" on the entire population, who lives already subjected to a "humanitarian catastrophe" without food, electricity, fuel and water.

"The lack of fuel leads to the closure of hospitals and bakeries. People end up in shelters in increasingly harsh, saturated conditions, with hardly any sanitation and drinking bad water, which raises the specter of disease outbreaks," the spokesperson said this Friday.

Shamdasani has also called for an end to the launching of "indiscriminate attacks" against Israeli territory, while calling for the "immediate and unconditional" release of all civilians kidnapped by Hamas. "The taking of hostages is also a war crime," he stressed.

The High Commissioner, Volker Turk, advocates working for peace, for which an immediate cessation of fighting is necessary, which requires "all those actors with influence to negotiate."