Israel Gaza news: UN ‘horror’ at mass grave at hospitals as US says Hamas ‘moved goalpost’ over ceasefire

The United Nations called Tuesday for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.

Credible investigators must have access to the sites, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, and added that more journalists need to be able to work safely in Gaza to report on the facts.

Earlier Tuesday, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Shifa medical center in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as well as the reported discovery of mass graves in and around the facilities after the Israelis left.

He called for independent and transparent investigations into the deaths, saying that “given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators.”

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Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi warned Israel that any attack on Iranian territory could result in potentially jeopardizing the existence of the “Zionist regime”.

“If the Zionist regime once again makes a mistake and attacks the sacred land of Iran, the situation will be different, and it is not clear whether anything will remain of this regime,” Raisi said during his visit to Pakistan on Tuesday.

“Today the greatest violators of human rights are the Americans and Westerners, and their claim of defending human rights is also empty,” he said, attacking the West for claiming to defend human rights but at the same time supporting Israel’s war in Gaza.

“The people of Iran and Pakistan both defend the oppressed Palestinian nation. Islamic Iran will continue to defend the resistance and the oppressed nation of Palestine with pride,” he added.

The organisation said it was reviewing claims more than 300 bodies were discovered at two different burial sites outside the Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals, some of whom were women and elderly people.

It warned of potential “serious violations” of humanitarian law after the bodies were found buried “deep in the ground and covered with waste”. The Israeli military said the claim was “baseless and unfounded”.

“Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands and stripped of their clothes,” a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson said.

“This of course indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and these need to be subjected to further investigations.”

Some Senate Democrats are talking the talk but not walking the walk on foreign aid to Israel.

The US Senate is debating a $95 billion foreign aid package after several months of infighting and delays by their House counterparts. The package would allocate $26.38 billion to fund Israeli defense systems – something progressive Senator Bernie Sanders isn’t too happy about.

Mr Sanders announced this week he is introducing amendments to significantly cut the amount of aid Israel would receive, saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has created a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.

Many of Mr Sanders’ Democratic colleagues have expressed similar concerns about civilian deaths and humanitarian aid — but not enough to consider amendments or delay the multi-billion-dollar deal, they told The Independent just minutes before the US Senate voted to strike down the possibility of adding any amendments to the aid package.

“I think it’s beyond belief that, on an issue where the majority of the American people don’t want to continue to support Netanyahu’s war machine slaughter of women and children in Gaza, that we couldn’t even get an amendment to deal with that,” Mr Sanders told The Independent.

My colleagues Katie Hawkinson and Eric Garcia have the full report:

Israel has taken significant steps in recent weeks on allowing aid into Gaza – but considerable work remains to be done as the risk of famine is very high, the US special envoy for humanitarian issues has said.

“Israel has taken significant steps in these last two and a half weeks,” David Satterfield told reporters. “There is still considerable work to be done. But progress has been made.”

The risk of famine throughout war-devastated Gaza, especially in the north, is “very high”, he said, calling for more to be done to get aid to those in need in that part of the tiny, densely populated Palestinian territory.

The US military has called on Iraq’s government to take steps to safeguard American troops in both Iraq and Syria – after failed attacks on Monday by Iran-aligned militia.

The drone and rocket fire were the first such incidents since a near three-month pause in what had been almost daily attacks that culminated in the January killing of three US soldiers at the Tower 22 outpost in Jordan.

With US-Iran tensions soaring after the Jordan attack, and some calls from Republican politicians in Washington for a direct US response against Iran, a senior Iranian commander had called on militia to halt their attacks at the end of January.

Speaking at the Pentagon, Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson, did not speculate about what triggered the renewal in attacks. But he called on Baghdad to act.

“These attacks put coalition and Iraqi personnel at risk. We call on the government of Iraq to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of US forces in Iraq and Syria against attacks from these groups,” Mr Ryder told a news briefing.

“If these attacks continue, we will not hesitate to defend our forces, as we have done in the past.”

At least two people were killed including an 11-year-old girl, and six others were injured after an Israeli airstrike hit a residential area in the southern Lebanese town of Hanin, Lebanon’s state news agency NNA has reported.

“Israeli warplanes struck a two-storey house with two air-to-surface missiles, completely destroying the building which was inhabited by a family that had not left the town since Israeli attacks began,” NNA said.

Hezbollah said in a statement it had fired dozens of Katyusha rockets Tuesday evening on the Israeli settlement of Margaliot in response to the Hanin attack.

Israeli forces and Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over six months in parallel to the Gaza war, in the most serious hostilities since they fought a major war in 2006.

The US State Department has said that reports on mass graves in Gaza are troubling.

Palestinian authorities reported finding hundreds of bodies in mass graves at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis this week after it was abandoned by Israeli troops. Bodies were also reported at the Al Shifa medical site following an Israeli special forces operation.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said earlier on Tuesday he was “horrified” by the mass grave reports at Gaza hospitals.

The US Senate has voted to advance a $95bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan toward possible passage later on Tuesday or on Wednesday – which would send it to the White House for Joe Biden to sign into law.

As voting continued, the vote was 65 to 12 in favour of advancing the package of foreign aid legislation to a vote on final passage, with more than then 60 needed.