Palestinians mourn over the body of a child following Israeli bombardment in Dayr al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on July 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Beirut, July 11 (RHC)-- The Palestinian Hamas resistance group has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate recent confessions by Israeli soldiers about their systematic war crimes in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas made the plea on Wednesday, two days after Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call published detailed accounts by former Israeli troops describing how they fired their weapons out of "boredom" and designated any Palestinians in sight as a threat.
“The confessions of the Zionist occupation soldiers … and their confirmation that they were given a green-light by the leaders of the terrorist occupation army to commit the most heinous crimes, such as shooting at unarmed civilians, burning and destroying homes” in Gaza require “serious follow-up by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,” the resistance group said in a statement.
The six Israeli soldiers, who had fought in the Gaza Strip, recounted "routinely" executing civilians mainly because they had entered an area defined as a "no-go zone" by the regime’s military. The soldiers said their surroundings were "littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or be eaten by stray animals." They noted that the Israeli army only hides bodies ahead of the arrival of international aid convoys.
If troops see a person approaching and do not know whether they are armed or pose a threat, "it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass (their body), not into the air... It's permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman," said a soldier identified as B.
Hamas said the Israeli force’ criminal practices make unarmed civilians “targets for amusement” and remain “a stain on humanity.” It further censured the international community for failing to take punitive measures against the fascist Israeli regime, which has flouted all rules during the Gaza onslaught.
Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza offensive on October 7 after Hamas carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 38,295 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza, and injured 88,241 others.
Recently, The Lancet, a leading general medical journal, estimated that the death toll from the Israeli aggression could be 186,000 or even more as many Palestinians have succumbed to indirect impacts of the Gaza war.
