Geneva  -  The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.

In a fresh report, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide”, it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability.

“Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.

“Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.”

It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement”. Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva  “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonisation of Israel”.

‘Dystopia of destruction’

“Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman.

“Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.”