29 May 2024; MEMO: Amnesty International UK strongly condemned on Tuesday the recent Israeli air strikes on Rafah, describing them as “horrific”. The rights organisation accused Israeli forces of escalating attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip “in defiance of international law,” Anadolu has reported.
Emphasising the indiscriminate nature of the attacks, which resulted in significant civilian casualties, Amnesty UK highlighted the fact that attacks which kill or injure civilians constitute “war crimes” and demanded an immediate investigation. It called for accountability as well as justice for the victims.
Israel’s current expansion of its incursion into Rafah brings the Israeli army close to being fully in control of the border area between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, a demilitarised buffer zone running along the Gaza-Egypt border. The Israeli occupation army has so far seized control of almost two-thirds of the corridor area as it advances under cover of heavy bombardment and shelling.
The apartheid state continued its brutal offensive in Gaza despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Nearly 36,100 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza, mainly women and children, and over 81,000 others have been wounded since October following a cross-border incursion by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. More than seven months into the Israeli war against the Palestinians in the enclave, vast swathes of Gaza are in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza. The settler-colonial state denies the allegation.
