About 4% of Gaza’s population dead, missing, or injured: Rights monitor

LONDON (AA) – More than 90,000 people, which is about 4% of the population in Gaza, are dead, wounded or missing, says a human rights monitor.

The Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says Israel’s continuous air, land and sea attacks have destroyed about 70% of the Gaza Strip’s civilian infrastructure since October 7.

In a statement, the group accused Israel of making the Strip uninhabitable. “Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians towards mass forced displacement.”

Hundreds of bodies that cannot be recovered remain on roads, according to Euro-Med, particularly in areas where the Israeli army has conducted ground incursions.

The group said Israel’s attacks are an “apparent attempt” to expand its territory to include the entire Gaza Strip, uprooting the vast majority of the population in violation of international law, which, it added, “likely amounts to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

Referring to reports that Israel is prohibiting humanitarian supplies from entering the Strip more frequently, Euro-Med noted that Israel is using “starvation as a weapon.”

It reiterated demands for special rapporteurs at the UN and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate “violations that have been widely documented since Israel started its genocidal war on Gaza.”

Israel launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip after October 7.

At least 22,600 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,910 injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.