A report released on Monday by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel claims that nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed while being held in detention by Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

The report, which PHRI said was based on “testimonies, official records, and extensive evidence” collected by the organization, shows that at least 98 Palestinians died in Israeli custody.

The report says that the deaths were part of a “deeply concerning pattern of systemic human rights violations committed against Palestinians,” and that people who died while in custody included “the young and elderly, the healthy and the sick alike.” PHRI also emphasized that the records in its report are far from complete, and indicated that the full death toll of Palestinians who died in custody is even higher.

Breaking things down further, the organization said it found that 42 Palestinians died while in custody of the Israel Prison Service (IPS), including Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, and even Palestinians who held Israeli citizenship. A further 52 Palestinians from Gaza died while in Israeli military custody.

The report shows a mixture of deaths from medical neglect, from physical abuse, or some combination of the two causes.

Witness testimony given to PHRI from both Palestinian detainees and Israeli physicians depicted military detention facilities as “sites of systematic torture and abuse, where dozens of Palestinians from Gaza died while in military custody.”

Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at human rights organization DAWN, said the PHRI report was more evidence that “Israel has become one of the worst systematic abusers of human rights in the world,” and he pointed the finger at the US for continuing to fund and enable such abuses.

“Despite overwhelming evidence of these crimes and grave violations of human rights, documented even by the State Department’s own watchdog, not a single Israeli unit has been deemed ineligible for US weapons, making the United States complicit in Israel’s systematic torture regime,” said Jarrar.

In addition to the Palestinians killed in Israeli custody, more than 69,000 Palestinians have died during Israel’s war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas launched an attack inside Israel that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.