The United Nations’ human rights office on Tuesday condemned Israeli strikes in Gaza that it said had killed at least 57 people, including six children, in the past week.

“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.

He decried that “the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians.” The Israeli strikes had killed “at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women” from July 13 to 20, Kheetan said.

The Israel Defense Forces has in recent days announced a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who it said were involved in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, or the subsequent holding of hostages.

It also reported striking a weapons depot, an arms manufacturing site, and a rocket-launching position, saying that this infrastructure posed a threat to its troops.

Kheetan said the strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims “killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line,” referring to the border between an IDF-controlled majority of the Strip and its remainder, which is de facto controlled by Hamas.

In attacks on July 17 and 18, Kheetan said the UN rights office had determined that 10 Israeli strikes killed at least 21 Palestinians.

“In one of these attacks, on an apartment in Gaza City, five members of one family were killed together: Both parents and three siblings, reportedly aged eight, 15, and 17,” he said.

Kheetan stressed that “the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza,” adding: “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war........

© The Times of Israel