26/8/2025

21/2025

ICHR: Bombing Hospitals and Targeting Journalists: An Ongoing Crime Requiring International Protection and an Immediate End to the Aggression

The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) strongly condemns the attack launched by Israeli forces on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on August 25, which resulted in the killing of at least 20 civilians, including five journalists, among them a female journalist, as well as members of the medical and civil defense teams. The ICHR affirms that this assault constitutes a war crime, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, targeting groups that are supposed to enjoy special protection under international law.

This crime came about two weeks after Israeli forces targeted a tent for journalists near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, leading to the killing of six journalists, as part of a systematic policy to silence witnesses and obscure the truth. The targeting of journalists has raised the death toll among them to 246, in addition to 139 civil defense personnel and more than 1,600 medical staff since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip.

It is also part of a series of repeated attacks on hospitals and medical centers in Gaza, which have rendered most of them out of service and deprived thousands of wounded and sick people of life-saving care.

The recurrence of these crimes, committed in the context of genocide and the deliberate starvation of the population of the Strip, demonstrates the persistence of Israel, the occupying power, in its violations and its disregard for international humanitarian law, while also exposing the failure of the international community to exert any serious pressure to stop them.

Among the victims of the latest attack was journalist and human rights defender Ahmad Abu Aziz, who assisted the ICHR in documenting the testimonies of victims and their families. His media work now stands as a living testimony to the grave crimes and violations committed against civilians in Gaza.

ICHR warns of the gravity of these crimes in light of the occupation’s insistence on escalating its aggression and invading what remains of Gaza City, amid public statements declaring the intent to destroy and erase Gaza, which threatens the forced displacement of more than one million Palestinians who are already enduring the full scale of this humanitarian catastrophe.

ICHR calls on the international community to immediately refer these crimes to the International Criminal Court, establish an independent international commission of inquiry, impose urgent sanctions, including an arms embargo on Israel, ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian and press personnel, and open safe humanitarian corridors to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded.

We affirm that international protection for the Palestinian people and the complete cessation of Israeli aggression must be key priorities on the international community’s agenda, as they represent the only path to ending this tragedy and preventing the commission of further crimes and violations.

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