IDF said to heavily damage 16 Gaza cemeteries during military operations

CNN report relies on satellite imagery, heavy armored vehicle tracks, and eyewitness accounts including from reporters who were driven through a graveyard in an APC

Screen capture from video showing a damaged cemetery in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip. (CNN/Reuters. Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Screen capture from video showing a damaged cemetery in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip. (CNN/Reuters. Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Israel Defense Forces soldiers fighting against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip have caused major damage to at least 16 cemeteries in the Palestinian coastal enclave, with military units operating inside graveyards, including using them as outposts, according to a Saturday report.

Gravestones have been ruined and the ground overturned. In some cases, bodies have been unearthed, CNN reported, based on satellite imagery, social media footage, and witness accountants including from its own reporters who traveled in an IDF convoy.

Intentional destruction of cemeteries is a violation of international law unless the site has become a military objective.

The ongoing war erupted on October 7, when Hamas carried out a devastating attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Thousands of terrorists who burst across the border from Gaza also abducted more than 240 people of all ages and took them as hostages to the Strip.

In response to the attack, Israel launched a sea, air, and ground military campaign aimed at destroying Hamas’s military capabilities, removing it from power in Gaza, and releasing the hostages. At least 105 remain captive, of whom the IDF has assessed some are no longer alive.

According to the CNN report, an IDF spokesperson “could not account for the destruction of the 16 cemeteries CNN provided coordinates for, but said the military sometimes has ‘no other choice’ but to target cemeteries it claimed Hamas uses for military purposes.”

IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip in pictures cleared for publication on January 21, 2024. (IDF)

The IDF spokesperson added, “We have a serious obligation to the respect of the dead and there is no policy to create military posts out of graveyards.”

But the network said its investigation found that the IDF appears to have used several cemeteries as military outposts, with bulldozers leveling large areas to turn them into staging grounds. Some sites had berms erected around them to fortify the positions, it said.

Last week an IDF armored personnel carrier transporting a CNN news crew drove directly through the New Bureij cemetery in Al-Bureij, a Palestinian refugee camp in central Gaza. The CNN team could see graves on either side of the vehicle displayed on a screen from its forward-facing camera. The network said it was able to confirm the location using geolocating of its own footage and satellite imagery.

Another location that suffered damage was the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where military vehicles were seen at the site of a cemetery. CNN noted that local media had reported the central part of the cemetery was already cleared before the war but other areas were more recently flattened, with the IDF operating in the area from December 10.

On December 18, the IDF published an image showing what it said was a rocket launcher set up in the cemetery. CNN said it could not verify when or where the photo was taken.

Satellite imagery has also shown bulldozing in the Bani Suheila cemetery, east of Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, where military fortifications were set up in late December and early January.

At the Al Falouja cemetery in the Jabaliya neighborhood north of Gaza City, the Al-Tuffah cemetery east of Gaza City, and a cemetery in Gaza City’s Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood, there were signs of heavy tread marks indicating armored vehicles had driven over graves.

Screen capture from video apparently showing heavy tread marks and damage in a Khuan Younis cemetery, January 2024. (CNN. Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Munther al Hayek, a spokesman for the Fatah movement, told CNN that his daughter Dina was killed in the 2014 Gaza conflict dubbed Operation Protective Edge. In early January he tried to find her grave at the Sheikh Radwan cemetery in Gaza City, but was unable to locate the plot or that of his grandmother, he said.

“The occupation forces destroyed and bulldozed them,” Hayek said. “The scenes are horrific. We want the world to intervene to protect Palestinian civilians.”

Acclaimed Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who relocated to Cairo, Egypt, during the fighting, told CNN that his brother had told him the Beit Lahia cemetery, in northern Gaza, where a younger brother and their grandfather are buried, had been heavily damaged. In a video call, Abu Toha’s brother showed the damage and reported he could not find the graves. CNN said it had reviewed the video call and it showed rubble strewn across the cemetery. Tread marks from heavy military vehicles can also be seen in satellite imagery, it said.

However, two other cemeteries that are in the war zone have been largely untouched, it said.

A cemetery close to Al-Tuffah holding the bodies of mostly British and Australian soldiers who died in world wars I and II has suffered only a crater hole, satellite imagery shows. In central Gaza, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission administers a cemetery holding the graves of Christian and some Jewish soldiers from World War I that was untouched even though the area around the site shows indications of combat including destroyed vehicles.

IDF soldiers posed with an Israeli flag next to the grave of a Jewish soldier in the cemetery for a photograph that was shared on social media.

Israel has admitted removing bodies from a cemetery in Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip, saying last week that it was searching for the remains of hostages abducted on October 7.

Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza by Palestinian terrorists, at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, January 20, 2024. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Responding to an NBC query on the matter, the IDF said in a statement that it was “committed to fulfilling its urgent mission to rescue the hostages and find and return the bodies of hostages that are held in Gaza.”

“When critical intelligence or operational information is received, the IDF conducts precise hostage rescue operations in the specific locations where information indicates that the bodies of hostages may be located,” the statement continued.

“The hostage identification process, conducted at a secure and alternative location, ensures optimal professional conditions and respect for the deceased. Bodies determined not to be those of hostages are returned with dignity and respect.”

“If not for Hamas’s reprehensible decision to take Israeli men, women, children, and babies as hostages, the need for such searches… would not exist.”

In its accusations against Israel of committing genocide brought at the International Court of Justice, South Africa also raised the issue of alleged cemetery desecration.

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