On Monday, the Palestinian civil defence in the Gaza Strip said it had uncovered 283 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in Khan Younis. The grounds were dug when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were unable to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the group said.

The civil defence said some of the bodies were people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital.

Palestinian health officials say the hospital raids have destroyed Gaza’s health sector as it tries to cope with the mounting toll from more than six months of war.

The issue of who could or should conduct an investigation remains in question.

For the UN to conduct an investigation, one of its major bodies would have to authorise it, Dujarric said.

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“I think it’s not for anyone to prejudge the results or who would do it. I think it needs to be an investigation where there is access and there is credibility.”

After visiting Israel and the West Bank in December, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said a probe by the court into possible crimes by Hamas militants and Israeli forces was “a priority for my office”.

The discovery of the graves “is another reason why we need a ceasefire, why we need to see an end to this conflict, why we need to see greater access for humanitarians … [and] the [Israeli] hostages released”, Dujarric said.

In the October 7 Hamas attack, militants killed about 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

In response, Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza, aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities, created a humanitarian crisis and caused about 80 per cent of the territory’s population to flee to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

AP

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