BEIRUT (Palestine Foundation Information Center) For the 234th day, the Zionist occupation continues its brutal aggression and genocide against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, committing massacres unprecedented in modern history, disregarding all UN resolutions and international conventions, and violating all values, customs, and divine laws, confirming the fascist nature of this occupation, which was founded on terrorism and massacres, said senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan in a press conference on Monday.
“Since the start of this aggression, the Zionist enemy has engaged in criminal behavior, targeting unarmed civilians, infrastructure, and civilian facilities; killing and executing in cold blood over 36,000 martyrs, approximately 81,000 wounded, and over 10,000 missing, most of whom are women and children.”
Hamdan pointed out that the occupation has destroyed hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and all civilian facilities, pursued the displaced to their places of refuge, burned their tents, and deprived them of all means of human life, intensifying the war of starvation, displacement, and genocide.
“The massacres of the occupation continue in Rafah, Jabalia, and Gaza, the latest being the burning of tents around the UNRWA headquarters, where US bombs and missiles of hatred and terrorism targeted thousands of our people, most of whom were children, women, patients, and elderly, burning their pure bodies and tearing their bodies into pieces,” he added.
He further said that the toll of the tent massacre in Rafah is 45 martyrs, including 23 women, children, and elderly, and 249 wounded.
“All the massacres committed by the occupation against civilians and innocents of our people are in areas classified by the enemy itself as safe, indicating its insistence and deliberate execution of these massacres, and its desperate attempts to displace our people through lies and claims to justify its horrific crimes against civilians.”
“The timing of these massacres in the past two days is a challenge from the Zionist-Nazi government of the criminal Netanyahu to the recent decisions of the International Court of Justice, which ordered the halt of the military operation in Rafah.”
“The international community is facing a historic responsibility to put an end to this Zionist arrogance, and to stop the aggression of this rogue entity that tries to impose itself above international law, above accountability for its crimes and massacres, with the full sponsorship of the U.S. administration, which is a partner in all these crimes with its political support, equipment that kills our people, and unlimited funding for the crime of genocide in Gaza.”
The senior Hamas official emphasized that “this massacre and heinous crime come as a retaliatory attempt by the Zionist enemy and its defeated and crushed army, soon by God’s will, after their inability to confront the men of Allah, the men of great courage, the men of Al-Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian resistance factions, the fighters of our heroic people in the battlefields.”
The burning of tents in Rafah, he added, comes to cover up the strategic and field failure that haunt the leaders of this defeated army since October 7, receiving successive painful blows “at the blessed hands of our heroes, the last of which was the heroic operation in Jabalia.”
He described the Israeli claims of the presence of militants at the massacre site during its execution as a blatant and false claim, disproved by images of the civilian martyrs’ bodies of children and women, in addition to the fact that the area is west of Rafah and far from the occupation’s operational and incursions area in Rafah.
Its claim that this aggression came in accordance with “international law” is a pure fabrication and a mockery of international law, and this Zionist-Nazi crime clearly and unequivocally confirms the nature of the Zionist entity, which is accustomed to disregarding laws, violating all international conventions and norms, and escaping legal accountability with the support of the US administration, Hamdan said.
Hamdan held the US administration and its President [Joe] Biden personally responsible for this heinous massacre against the displaced in Rafah, and for all the crimes of the occupation in Gaza, by continuing to provide political and military cover for the occupation, and continuing to supply it with military equipment and bombs that daily kill dozens of children, women, and civilians.
