Chicago – December 09, 2023
A senior Hamas official accused Israeli forces on Friday of carrying out a “heinous crime against innocent civilians” after images of detained Palestinian men stripped to their underwear in Gaza circulated on social media.
Izzat El-Reshiq, who is in exile abroad, urged international human rights organisations to intervene to show what happened to the men and help secure their release.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was concerned by the images and that all detainees must be treated with humanity and dignity in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, whose country backs Hamas, also criticised Israel, accusing it on X of “barbarity in the treatment of innocent captives and citizens”.
Israeli TV on Thursday showed footage, which Reuters has verified, of what it said were captured Hamas fighters, stripped to their underwear with heads bowed sitting in a Gaza City street.
“We are talking about individuals who are apprehended in Jabalia and Shejaia (in Gaza city), Hamas strongholds and centres of gravity,” Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy told a briefing when asked about the images.
“We are talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago.”
Israeli’s military has been telling civilians to leave areas where it plans to operate after launching its campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza following the Islamist militant group’s Oct. 7 killing spree in Israel.
One photo showed more than 20 male detainees kneeling on the pavement or in the street, with Israeli soldiers looking on and dozens of shoes and sandals abandoned in the road. A similar number of detainees, also semi-naked, were crammed into the back of a truck nearby.
Some Palestinians said they recognised relatives in the images and denied they had links to Hamas or any other group. Some, they said, were boys or youths.
Reshiq said the detainees had been captured at a school in Gaza that was being used as a shelter after weeks of Israeli bombardments that have displaced many Gazans.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Al Safadi, speaking at an news conference ahead of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said doctors and journalists were among the men captured and “humiliated.”
