Medics said several casualties were rushed to the emergency unit of Nasser Hospital on Monday (12/8), after an Israeli airstrike in the Khan Younis area.
The victims were carried in the back of trucks or cars, and most arrived at the hospital on stretchers.
“My nephew’s brain is coming out of his head! We are dying! Where is the humanity?” shouted Fathiya Hassan Atiya, a desperate Palestinian woman.
Palestinian medics say Israeli military strikes have killed at least 18 people and wounded many more.
Israeli forces applied pressure with a number of operations near the southern side of Gaza City on Monday, amid international pressure for an agreement to end fighting in Gaza and prevent the region from slipping into a wider regional conflict with Iran and its proxies.
The tense situation in Gaza is in contrast to the calmer conditions in most parts of Israel.
As Reuters reports, Israelis in the northern city of Haifa are trying to go about their daily routines amid regional tensions and fears of a full-scale conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Locals flock to the port city's beaches and cafes, while visitors from across the country flock to local attractions, including the lush Baha'i gardens.
“The atmosphere in the park is very peaceful. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think about the possibility that at any moment something could happen, but I try not to think about it too much, because then you can’t really enjoy life,” said Clarin Winterman, a 30-year-old from Petah Tikva in central Israel, who was visiting the revered site with her husband.
There is a growing risk of this escalation into a wider Middle East war, following the assassination of a Hamas leader in Iran, and a Hezbollah military commander in Beirut, which poses a threat of retaliation against Israel.
Elsewhere in the Mevo'ot Hahermon Regional Council in northern Israel, the military launched air interceptors to shoot down a drone launched from Lebanon on Saturday night (August 10). One of the interceptors caused damage to a swimming pool at a rehabilitation center, witnesses said.
The drone strike occurred as the center was closed. No injuries were reported.
Questioning the Geneva Conventions
As the Geneva Conventions mark their 75th anniversary, there is growing concern about the world’s compliance with the global accords. The Geneva Conventions are the world’s most famous set of rules for protecting civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers wounded in war. They have been widely ignored, from Gaza to Syria, Ukraine to Myanmar and beyond. Supporters of the conventions are calling for a renewed commitment by all parties to international humanitarian law.
The Geneva Convention, which has been adopted by almost all countries in the world since it was ratified on August 12, 1949, seems to be trampled on because armed militia groups and troops from various countries continuously ignore these rules of war.
“International humanitarian law is under pressure, ignored, undermined to justify violence,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which oversees the convention, on Monday.
“The world must recommit to this robust protection framework, for armed conflict, that follows the premise of protecting life, rather than justifying death,” he added.
The convention, which has its roots in the 19th century, aims to establish rules around the conduct of war: it prohibits torture and sexual violence, demands humane treatment of prisoners and requires searches for missing persons.
“This convention reflects a global agreement that all wars have limits,” Spoljaric told journalists at ICRC headquarters in Geneva.
“Dehumanization of enemy fighters and civilians is a path to destruction and disaster,” he added.
The Red Cross says the convention is needed now more than ever, with the agency counting more than 120 active conflicts worldwide, a six-fold increase since the convention's half-century anniversary in 1999.
Currently, many states and combatants exploit loopholes in international humanitarian law or interpret it to suit their own desires.
Many hospitals, schools and ambulances were burned, aid workers and civilians were killed, and many countries denied access to their prisoners of war. (ns/jm)
