An initial investigation by Euro-Med on December 13 confirmed that the victims at the school “were subjected to field executions while being questioned by members of the Israeli army.”
Al Jazeera has published harrowing footage on Wednesday detailing the Israeli execution of Palestinians, including children and babies, who were sheltering at the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in northern Gaza.
The exclusive videos found an unconfirmed number of bodies piled up at the school.
One woman told Al Jazeera that the Israeli forces had entered the facility and took civilians, including children, inside a room where they “executed them.”
“The Israeli soldiers came in and opened fire on them. They took an old man. The Israeli soldiers stormed the school, took all the men, then entered classrooms and opened fire on a woman and all the children with her, even the newborn babies among them,” the visibly distressed woman said in Al Jazeera’s video report.
One man who spoke to Al Jazeera at the school said he found “dozens of dead bodies in the classrooms” without any signs of missiles or shelling, proving that the Palestinians were killed at point blank range.
Al Jazeera English’s correspondent in Gaza, Hani Mahmoud, told a live broadcast on Wednesday that Israeli tanks had already destroyed the majority of northern Gaza believing the area is a Hamas stronghold.
Mahmoud noted the footage indicated that Israeli forces had also bulldozed parts of the Shadia Abu Ghazala School.
An initial investigation by Euro-Med on December 13 confirmed that the victims at the school “were subjected to field executions while being questioned by members of the Israeli army.”
“The bodies were discovered following the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the surrounding area of the school, following several days of abuses and violations against displaced people evacuating there,” Euro-Med said.
Israel has intensified its raids on schools and hospitals in Gaza, forcefully evacuating displaced people sheltering inside the facilities. An estimated 90% of Palesinians in Gaza are displaced, which is almost 2 million people.
Euro-Med said that the Israeli forces have turned Gaza’s schools into “military centres and field execution sites,” where occupation forces have carried out harrowing crimes.
A displaced person, who asked to remain anonymous, told the rights organisation that Israel raided the Salah Al-Din School in Gaza City this week and killed around 50 people.
The witness said the Israeli forces separated the women and children from the men at the school before forcing them “to take off their clothes and subjected them to rough interrogations.”
“As the displaced people moved toward the Gaza Valley, he continued, the Israeli forces opened their machine gun fire at them, leaving five dead and several others injured,” Euro-Med added, calling for an international investigation into the Israeli crimes.
Since October 7, Israel has killed at least 18,608 Palestinians in Gaza, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the latest figures by the health ministry in Gaza.
Euro-Med reported a much higher figure on Monday of 24,142, including 9,420 children and those who are presumed dead under the rubble. The European rights organisation has not updated the figure since December 11.
Speaking at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva on Wednesday, Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, stressed that Palestinians “are witnessing the darkest chapter of their history since 1948.”
Lazzarini was referring to the year of the Nakba or “catastrophe,” which marked the mass exodus of at least 750,000 Palestinians forced by Zionist militias to establish Israel.
“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the siege to let in sufficient aid. I welcome here the overwhelming support of 153 UN Member States at the General Assembly calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Lazzarini said.
