UN-backed experts accuse Israel of sexual and gender-based violence in Gaza

United Nations-backed experts have accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence” in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the accusations and accused the commission, which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council, of relying on “second-hand, single, uncorroborated sources”.

The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory is led by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. Its findings can be used as evidence for the International Criminal Court or other bodies that seek to prosecute war crimes.

Israel has refused to co-operate with the commission, accusing it and the council of being biased against it.

In its report released on Thursday, the commission examined the widespread destruction of Gaza, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas and Israeli attacks on hospitals and health facilities. It said all three had led to “disproportionate violence against women and children”.

Israel says it took extraordinary measures to avoid harming civilians in the 15-month war, which has been paused by a fragile ceasefire. It blames civilian deaths and destruction on Hamas because the militants operate in residential areas.

The commission also accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees. Israel denies any systematic abuse of prisoners and says it takes action when there are violations.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.

A UN envoy last year said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape and sexual violence in the attack.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants.

Meanwhile, Syria’s state news agency says an Israeli airstrike has struck a residential building on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

The agency did not give further details about Thursday’s airstrike.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the building targeted was located in the suburb of Dummar, northwest of the capital and was inhabited by Palestinians. It said one person was killed.

Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz confirmed that it had carried out an airstrike on a residential building in Damascus but did not provide further details.

Mr Katz warned in a statement that “whenever terrorist activity is organised against Israel”, Syria’s new president Ahmad al-Sharaa “will find air force planes circling above him and attacking terrorist targets”.

Arab media outlets reported that the airstrike targeted members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.

An official with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group could not confirm if members of the group were targeted in the attack.

Elsewhere, Israel said it had sent 10,000 packages of food aid to Syria’s Druze, as it seeks to forge ties with the minority to shape the country’s troubled transition from civil war.

The Israeli foreign ministry said on Thursday that the operation was conducted in recent weeks in co-ordination with local Druze leaders, with most of the aid delivered to the overwhelmingly Druze southern region of Sweida.

Israel says it is supporting an embattled minority in a country now ruled by Islamists. But many Druze have rejected its overtures, and critics accuse Israel trying to weaken and divide Syria following the overthrow of former president Bashar Assad.

Israel seized a buffer zone in southern Syria shortly after Mr Assad’s overthrow and has carried out waves of airstrikes to destroy Syria’s military. It has ordered the new security forces not to operate south of the capital, Damascus.

Israel says it is acting in Syria to protect its citizens from Iran-backed groups that were allied with Mr Assad as well as the new government, led by a former senior al-Qaida leader who cut ties with the group several years ago.