LONDON: Nearly 3,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli war in Gaza Strip identified by independent observers
The UK-based Airwars organisation, which assesses the civilian impact of conflicts around the world, analysed nearly 346 incidents during the first 17 days of the war and named 2,993 victims of Israeli attacks.
An airstrike on the Jabaliya refugee camp on October 9, 2015, killed 65 people, in the deadliest of the initial attacks.
Authorities used evidence, including social media posts, to identify the dead, including that of 19-year-old Imad Hamad, after his father, Ziyad, posted on Facebook that his son had died while he went out to buy bread.
“Losing my son, losing my home, sleeping on the floor of my classroom, my children drenched in panic, fear, cold. We had nothing to do with this. What did we do wrong? What did I raise my children for? To see them die while buying bread,” Ziyad posted.
“The military often tells us that it’s impossible to know who was killed and how. But one of our core messages is to show that it is possible. The only thing holding us back is the size of our team,” said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars.
“Our job is to act as a bridge between chaos and justice, to help civilian victims of military operations around the world. We consider what we are doing as necessary preliminary work before any further investigations can be conducted,” she added.
In addition to the Jabaliya attack, AirWars also identified several other deadly attacks, including at al-Taj and the Nusairat refugee camp.
“Before this conflict, there were very few cases in which more than 10 civilians were killed,” Tripp said.
“But then all of a sudden we found out that in one third of our cases, 10 civilians were reported dead,” she added. “We know how and when each person was killed.”
Overall, 37.7 percent of the recorded victims were children and 23.5 percent were women.
At the start of the war, Gaza health officials reported that as many as 7,000 people had been killed by Israeli attacks, which Airwars said it believed was fairly accurate.
“It’s possible to trust the numbers from the health department,” Tripp said. “And you don’t have to wait years to be sure.”
However, as the war drags on, authorities’ ability to count the dead has diminished as infrastructure has come under increasing strain, leaving hospitals and morgues overwhelmed.
AirWars said it had recorded more than 4,450 incidents since the war began, but had only been able to assess 550 of them, with only 10-15 investigations.
