New evidence of deadly unlawful attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip, gathered by Amnesty International, demonstrates how Israeli forces continue to disregard international humanitarian law, killing entire families with absolute impunity — acts that could potentially be labeled as war crimes.
Amnesty International carried out an investigation into four Israeli strikes, three dated from December 2023, after the end of the humanitarian pause, and the fourth in January 2024, which killed at least 95 civilians, including 42 children, in Rafah.
Gaza’s southernmost governorate at the time was supposedly the “safest” area in Gaza, where Israeli forces are currently gearing up for a ground operation.
According to the organization, this operation will likely have “devastating consequences for more than a million people who are crammed within an area of 63 km2 following successive waves of mass displacement.”
In all four attacks, the organization did not find any indication that the residential buildings subjected to attacks could be considered legitimate military targets or that individuals in the buildings were military targets.
This raises concerns that these strikes were direct hits on civilian objects and civilians and must be investigated as war crimes.
Even if Israeli forces had intended to target legitimate military objectives in the vicinity, these attacks evidently failed to distinguish between civilian objectives and military objects and would therefore be indiscriminate.
Indiscriminate attacks that wound and kill civilians are war crimes. The evidence collected by Amnesty International also demonstrates the Israeli military failed to send any warning to anyone living in the locations that were targeted before launching the attacks.
