Hamas demands immediate international investigation into mass graves in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

Hamas demanded an immediate international investigation Thursday into mass graves with hundreds of bodies that were killed by the Israeli army at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

"Medical teams continue to discover the bodies of martyrs who were executed by the fascist Israeli army and buried in mass graves at the Nasser Medical Complex,'' it said in a statement.

The statement urged the international community to send specialized forensic teams and necessary equipment to search for the missing and identify the bodies.

It stressed the immediate need ''to establish an independent international committee to investigate these heinous crimes of mass graves containing the bodies of patients, wounded, children, and women who were subjected to torture and brutality, in addition to indications of some being buried alive."

The Gaza Civil Defense agency said Thursday that it uncovered 392 bodies in three mass graves at Nasser Hospital.

The Israeli army withdrew from Khan Younis on April 7 after a four-month ground operation in the Nasser Medical Complex.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, on Oct. 7, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.

More than 34,300 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 77,300 injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul