Israel ‘summarily’ killed 11 men in front of their families, says UN

Reports of Israel “summarily” killing Palestinian men in front of their families has been reported by the UN. As many as 11 unarmed Palestinian men are said to have been killed in front of their family members in the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The massacre comes in the wake of earlier allegations concerning the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians at the hands of Israeli forces and growing concerns over what many consider to be a culture of impunity within Israel’s military.

A demonstration of the culture of impunity under which Israeli soldiers operate was given last week with the killing of three Israeli captives who were killed by occupation soldiers despite waving a white flag. They were mistaken for Palestinians.

Israeli soldiers killed the 11 men in front of their family yesterday. IDF reportedly surrounded and raided Al Awda building, also known as the Annan building, in Remal, where three families that were related were sheltering with the Annan family.

“While in control of the building and the civilians sheltering there, the IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20s and early 30s, in front of their family members,” said the UN body.

The women and children are also said to have been subjected to shocking violence. “The IDF then allegedly ordered the women and children into a room, and either shot at them or threw a grenade into the room, reportedly seriously injuring some of them, including an infant and a child,” OCHA added.

The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 20,000, making it the one of the worst massacres in living memory. Palestinians are being killed at a higher rate by the Israelis in their so-called targeted bombing campaign than Brits killed by Nazi Germany during eight months of indiscriminate bombing.

More than 40,000 civilians were killed by the German Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in London where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged. Under the current rate of death, Israel will have killed 80,000 Palestinians if the military operation were to last eight months.

READ: Number of casualties in Gaza ‘unacceptable’: UN