UN Agency Says 52,000 Displaced in Gaza, Amnesty Wants War Crimes Investigation

More than 52,000 Palestinians have been displaced by Israeli air strikes that have destroyed or badly damaged nearly 450 buildings in the Gaza Strip, the UN aid agency said on Tuesday.
In a separate statement on the conflict, rights
group Amnesty International said Israel air strikes on residential buildings
might amount to war crimes.
Israel says it hits only legitimate military
targets and that it does all it can to avoid civilian casualties.
About 47,000 of the displaced people have sought
shelter in 58 UN-run schools in Gaza, Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva,
told reporters.
Laerke said 132 buildings had been destroyed and
316 had been severely damaged, including six hospitals and nine primary
healthcare centers as well a desalination plant, affecting access to drinking
water for about 250,000 people, Reuters reported.
The UN agency welcomed the fact that Israel had
opened a border crossing for humanitarian supplies but called for another
crossing to also be opened.
The UN and its humanitarian partners are
providing food and other assistance to displaced families when the security
situation allows, Laerke said.
There is a severe shortage of medical supplies,
a risk of water-borne diseases and the spread of COVID-19 because of displaced
people crowding into schools, said Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World
Health Organization.
London-based Amnesty International called for an
investigation into air strikes on residential buildings in Gaza.
“Israeli
forces have displayed a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian
civilians by carrying out a number of airstrikes targeting residential
buildings in some cases killing entire families – including children – and
causing wanton destruction to civilian property, in attacks that may amount to
war crimes or crimes against humanity,” Amnesty said.
Israel says it strikes only sites it deems
military targets used by militants and that it regularly issues prior warnings
to evacuate buildings it sees as legitimate targets as part of wider efforts to
avoid civilian casualties.
Amnesty, which urged both sides last week not to
violate humanitarian law, said it had documented four deadly attacks by Israel
launched on residential homes without prior warning and called on the
International Criminal Court to investigate.
It said Israeli strikes on May 11 destroyed two
residential buildings belonging to the Abu al-Ouf and al-Kolaq families,
killing 30 people, 11 of them children. A mother and three children were killed
on May 14 when the al-Atar family’s three-story building was hit, it said.
It said the home of Nader Mahmoud Mohammed
Al-Thom, where he lives with eight others, was attacked without warning on May
15.
Israel did not immediately comment on the
specific cases.