Jon Queally: ‘We Have Run Out of Body Bags to Bury the Dead’ in Gaza

A relentless series of assaults in central and northern Gaza by Israeli forces, according to reports on the ground, have killed numerous civilians—including children, rescue workers, and journalists—in recent days with no end in sight.

Rescue workers, children, and journalists are among the civilians killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Sunday, as the death toll continues to mount in a military campaign Amnesty International earlier this month said has all the markings of an active and ongoing genocide.

“Due to the rising Israeli bombings and killings in northern Gaza, we have run out of body bags to bury the dead,” said Palestinian journalist Hossam Sabath, reporting from northern Gaza on Sunday. “Now we resort to using any piece of clothing or a blanket for their burial.”

On the ground in the town of Beit Hanoun, where Israeli troops reportedly killed at least 20 people—including civilians—in a series of raids in the area on Sunday, Sabath said the the “scenes of charred bodies are too distressing for us to broadcast. However, they are part of the documented evidence of genocide involving the burning of people alive. We are ready to hand them over to any human rights organization.”

According to the Gulf Times:

Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on Sunday in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said.

They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.

Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.

In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.

Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, quoted witnesses who reported “severe injuries” among those who survived the attacks further north.

“They have nowhere to go because the Israeli military forces are encircling the area with tanks and armored vehicles, and hammering the school with heavy artillery,” Mahmoud reported. 

A family of four were among those killed, including two children, after the classroom where they were sheltering took a “direct hit” from Israeli artillery fire that arrived without prior warning, the outlet reported.

“Many of the injured are in the courtyard of the school and inside the other classrooms,” according to Mahmoud. “They can’t get any treatment because none of the hospitals in Beit Hanoon are operational.”

Separately, Al-Jazeera reports Sunday that an Israeli bombing killed three members of the Palestinian civil defense search-and-rescue team in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The new agency also reported that one of its own staff, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, was killed in the same attack. 

Ahram Online reports:

In its first response to the incident, Gaza’s government media office condemned the killing of al-Louh and called on the international community to act against the systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists. “The number of martyred journalists has now risen to 195 with the martyrdom of colleague Ahmed al-Louh,” the office stated.

Al Jazeera reiterated its condemnation of the attack, describing al-Louh’s death as part of a broader assault on press freedom in Gaza. “Ahmed al-Louh was dedicated to documenting the realities of the ongoing conflict under the most dangerous conditions,” the network said.

“The unprecedented killing of journalists by the Israeli military continues with impunity,” said fellow reporter Sharif Kouddous. 

On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a 296-page report—featuring interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel’s large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza’s agricultural land and civilian infrastructure—that conclude what Israelhas been doing in Gaza amounts to genocide.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, upon release of the document. “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”

As the weekend’s latest catalog of death and injuries suggests, it has not stopped.

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Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.

First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.