The Israeli occupation army has admitted to stealing bodies from the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to brutal aggression and genocide for over 100 days. The occupation attempted to justify its action by claiming to search for the bodies of Israeli detainees killed in Gaza, according to the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” on Thursday, January 18, 2024.
The newspaper quoted the Israeli occupation army as saying, “Soldiers took bodies from the graves in the Gaza Strip in cases where there is a real suspicion that they belong to abductees,” referring to the prisoners captured by the Palestinian resistance during the Al-Aqsa Deluge operation on October 7 last year.
The Israeli occupation army also stated, “As part of the efforts to find the abductees and the missing, the Israeli Defense Forces are working in a targeted manner in places where there is intelligence information about the presence of abductees, including cemeteries.”
The Israeli occupation army claimed, “This is done if there is a real suspicion that they are abductees, and they are taken for examination and identification. The examination is conducted in an organized manner, preserving the dignity of the deceased and in a respectful manner,” according to “Haaretz.”
Israeli Occupation Crimes
On Wednesday, January 17, Anadolu Agency reported that Israeli military vehicles withdrew from the vicinity of the Nasser al-Toubi complex in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, after destroying a cemetery in the city and excavating several graves.
It added that Israeli tanks and military bulldozers withdrew hundreds of meters from the areas surrounding the Nasser al-Toubi complex, leaving massive destruction in the areas they penetrated. The Israeli withdrawal revealed the destruction of a cemetery near the hospital and the excavation of several graves.
Eyewitnesses from the residents stated that the cemetery had previously been subjected to intense shelling by Israeli artillery and warplanes, destroying hundreds of graves.
The authorities in Gaza revealed on Saturday, January 6, that the Israeli occupation army had dug up hundreds of graves in the Tuffah cemetery east of Gaza City, stealing 150 bodies. This adds to its series of crimes during its ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza government’s media office stated in a statement that the occupation army had dug up about 1,100 graves in the Tuffah cemetery east of Gaza City after excavating and removing the bodies of martyrs and the deceased from it. It emphasized that the occupation’s vehicles trampled on the bodies of martyrs and the deceased, violating their dignity without any regard for the sanctity of the dead or the graves.
After digging up the graves and excavating the cemetery, the occupation army stole about 150 bodies of recently buried martyrs, extracting them from the graves and transporting them to an unknown location, raising suspicions once again of another crime – the theft of the martyrs’ organs, as previously mentioned in earlier statements.
