Gaza, March 15 (QNA) - Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor) said it has documented that the Israeli army destroyed 93.5% of cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, either completely or partially, in the context of the ongoing genocide since October 2023.

In a statement, Euro-Med Monitor said the systematic targeting of graves through demolition and bulldozing constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and reflects a deliberate pattern of erasure.

These actions violate the sanctity of the dead, erase physical traces, inflict severe psychological and spiritual harm on the living, and ultimately undermine collective memory while severing historical ties between the population, their ancestors, and their land.

The Euro-Med Monitor team analyzed data from 62 official cemeteries across the Gaza Strip's five governorates. The findings show that the Israeli army completely bulldozed and destroyed graves in 39 cemeteries (approximately 62.9% of the total) and partially damaged 19 others (approximately 30.6%). Only four cemeteries, or 6.4%, remain intact.

The statement noted that the widespread, direct destruction of cemeteries in the Gaza Strip was neither incidental to military operations nor justified by "military necessity." Rather, it was a deliberate and planned effort to obstruct the identification and documentation of remains.

Euro-Med Monitor stressed that the systematic military targeting of cemeteries constitutes a flagrant violation of customary and treaty-based international humanitarian law, which obligates parties to a conflict to respect the remains of the dead, protect burial sites, refrain from tampering with them, and take feasible measures to facilitate identification and preserve identity data.

The organization emphasized that cemeteries are civilian objects and sites of religious and humanitarian sanctity and are protected from attack or destruction unless that protection is exceptionally and demonstrably lost due to military use, which the widely documented facts do not support.

It added that the deliberate bulldozing and destruction of cemeteries on this scale, along with the tampering with, confiscation of, and mixing of remains, constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute, whether as unlawful attacks against protected objects or as acts amounting to outrages upon personal dignity and the desecration of corpses.

Euro-Med Monitor called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include crimes related to the destruction and desecration of cemeteries, the exhumation of graves, and the tampering with and removal of bodies in its ongoing investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine.

As such it urged the Court to treat these acts as standalone war crimes, open a dedicated investigative track, and issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials bearing direct or command responsibility, alongside urgent measures to preserve evidence related to these crimes and prevent any tampering or destruction. (QNA)