United Nations, December 28 (RHC)-- The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestinian territories says the level of oppression Palestinians have experienced in Gaza is unmatched and unprecedented in recent history.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, has said that "in Gaza, Palestinian children are given sedatives to alleviate their pain while dying - as they cannot be treated." "80 days of heavy Israeli bombing have devastated the health system. This level of horror is unmatched in our lifetime," she added.
Albanese also on Tuesday said that the international community’s silence on Israeli crimes against Palestinians has allowed the occupying regime to commit genocide in Gaza, likening the situation in the besieged strip to massacres in other parts of the world such as Srebrenica and Rwanda.
Albanese, who has frequently criticized Israel's occupation of Palestine and the regime’s relentless crimes against innocent Palestinians, has been barred by the regime from entering the occupied territories since her appointment as the UN special rapporteur in April 2022.
She has also slammed the European Union’s unwavering support for Israel in its aggression on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and its double standards regarding Palestine and Ukraine.
The UN special rapporteur on Palestine says the international community’s silence has allowed the occupying regime to commit genocide in Gaza. Albanese also in April had called out Western media for their “misleading” coverage of Israeli military raids, saying such an approach contributes to the regime's unchecked occupation. She was referring to the headline of a BBC news article that used the word “clashes” to refer to the brutal assault unleashed by Israeli forces against unarmed Palestinian worshippers at al-Aqsa mosque.
Meanwhile, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) organization also on Wednesday expressed "horror" about the dire situation of the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, saying the proportions of death and destruction in the genocidal Israeli war are indescribable.
MSF medics say they are in shock and fear, having no words to describe the horror of what is happening in Gaza, as the regime forces target the health infrastructures. The latest remarks by Albanese come as the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said the health system in Gaza was being destroyed as Israel intensifies its aerial and artillery strikes on the besieged Palestinian territory.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said in a social media post on Sunday that the decimation of the Gaza health system was a tragedy. He also reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire. The UN health agency has long been sounding the alarm about the state of health care in the besieged territory. Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes since the war erupted.
The World Health Organization has warned that the health system in Gaza is being destroyed.
Of Gaza's original 36 hospitals, only nine are now partially functional, all of them in the south and all of them overwhelmed.
The latest remarks by Albanese also come as the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, says Israel has stolen the organs of 80 Palestinians whose bodies were abducted by the regime’s invading troops in Gaza. Hamas, in a statement, condemned Israel’s cruelties after the regime returned the bodies to Gaza in a state of decomposition, which made their identification difficult. Hamas said, this heinous crime once again proved Israel’s barbarism and moral decline.
Gaza’s government media office also confirmed that the bodies delivered to Gaza were mutilated and their organs were stolen. It called for an independent international investigation into the abduction of slain Palestinians and the stealing of their organs.
This is not the first time Israel has stolen the organs of dead Palestinians. The regime had in the past admitted that it harvested organs from dead Palestinians.