UN condemns intensifying Israeli attacks in Gaza

GENEVA – The United Nations on July 21 condemned intensifying Israeli military attacks in Gaza that it said had killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children, in the past week.

A ceasefire agreed in October remains in place between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, but it has not halted the violence in Gaza.

“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN rights office spokesman Thameen al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.

He decried that “the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians”.

The Israeli attacks had killed “at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women” from July 13 to July 20, Kheetan said.

The Israeli army in recent days announced a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who it said were involved in the Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, or the holding of hostages after.

It also reported striking a weapons depot, an arms manufacturing site, and a rocket-launching position, saying that this infrastructure posed a threat to its troops.

Kheetan said the strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims “killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line”.

In attacks on July 17 and July 18, for instance, he said the UN rights office had determined that 10 Israeli attacks in Gaza City, middle Gaza, north Gaza and Khan Yunis had killed at least 21 Palestinians.

“In one of these attacks, on an apartment in Gaza City, five members of one family were killed together: both parents and three siblings, reportedly aged eight, 15, and 17,” he said.

Kheetan stressed that “the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza”.

“Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime.”

The spokesman also warned that Israel’s constant moving of the “yellow line” westwards had left the Palestinian population in Gaza “trapped in an ever-shrinking area”.

This, he stressed, presents “a continuous threat to life as the Israeli military appears to routinely fire on Palestinians for mere presence in the vicinity of that line, in violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law”.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the truce took effect in October 2025, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The UN rights office has so far verified the killing of 685 Palestinians between October 2025 and April 2026, Kheetan said.

Restrictions imposed on media outlets and limited access in Gaza prevent AFP from independently verifying tolls or freely covering the violence there. AFP