About the mass graves in Nasser Hospital in Gaza.. What did the satellite images reveal?
On Thursday, Palestinian officials raised the number of bodies discovered in a mass grave on the grounds of Nasser Hospital to 392 from 283, amid conflicting accounts between Israel and the authorities in Gaza about how and when some bodies were buried.
A few days ago, the Civil Defense announced the discovery of mass graves in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, from which hundreds of bodies were recovered.
On Monday, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, confirmed in an interview with Al-Hurra TV that more than 100 bodies were discovered buried in mass graves around the Nasser Medical Complex, after the Israeli army withdrew from the area more than two weeks ago.
Basal said that the Civil Defense Forces, in cooperation with medical teams, recovered about 115 bodies, “where 50 bodies were found on the first day, Saturday, and about 65 bodies the next day,” stressing that efforts are continuing to discover more “bodies of martyrs.”
In response to these reports, the Israeli army said, on Tuesday, in a statement to the Al-Hurra website, that the claim that the Israeli army “buried Palestinian bodies is completely false.”
The army added, “During the activity, the bodies buried by Palestinians in the Nasser Hospital area were examined, as part of the efforts aimed at locating the kidnapped and missing persons, within the framework of which the army acted in a specific manner in places where intelligence information was available about the possible presence of kidnapped persons.”
The American newspaper’s analysis concluded that “the Palestinians dug at least two of the three mass grave sites, weeks before the Israeli forces raided the medical complex.”
It is not clear how the people buried in the Nasser Medical Complex died. While The New York Times was unable to determine the cause of death of these people, the initial burials took place in January and February amid a weeks-long Israeli attack in the city.
Satellite images analyzed by the New York Times show that “the large mass grave that Gazans first dug under palm trees in the southern part of the complex was rammed by Israeli forces, including with a bulldozer, lending credibility to the Israeli claim.” They exhumed the bodies and reburied them.”
This new cemetery was established during or after the Israeli presence on the hospital grounds, but it is not clear who dug it, as a number of graves are topped with signs written in Arabic saying “Unknown Martyr,” according to the New York Times. (free)
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