The International Commission: A Broad Bloody Escalation and Direct Targeting of Families and Residential Apartments in Gaza Amount to War Crimes and Reflect a Systematic Pattern of Exterminating Civilians and Erasing Families from the Civil Registry

Date: 4 June 2026

Press Release

The International Commission: A Broad Bloody Escalation and Direct Targeting of Families and Residential Apartments in Gaza Amount to War Crimes and Reflect a Systematic Pattern of Exterminating Civilians and Erasing Families from the Civil Registry

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) is following with profound concern and deep shock the dangerous and violent field developments witnessed in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, which were marked by an intensified Israeli military escalation and simultaneous airstrikes targeting residential apartments, inhabited homes, and areas where displaced persons had gathered.

These crimes confirm the determination of the Israeli occupation forces to continue their policy of extermination and their blatant violation of international obligations, targeting every detail of daily civilian life. Official medical reports issued by the Ministry of Health documented the arrival of 12 martyrs and 32 injuries at hospitals in the Strip in recent hours, bringing the cumulative overall toll of the ongoing aggression since 7 October 2023 to 72,956 martyrs and 173,043 injured, while thousands of victims remain under the rubble and on the roads because ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them due to fuel shortages and the severe lack of heavy equipment.

Documented field data indicate that Israeli warplanes carried out a series of simultaneous strikes at dawn today, Thursday, directly targeting four inhabited residential apartments in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Radwan, Tel al-Hawa, and Intelligence Street in northwestern Gaza City. The occupation targeted a residential apartment on the fourth floor of a building belonging to the Labad family, resulting in the extermination of an entire family and its erasure from the civil registry, as five family members were killed: the father Hassan Rabah Hassan Labad, his wife Manar Ibrahim Hassan Labad, and their children Mohammed, Rahaf, and Tamim Labad. The only survivor of this massacre was the nine-year-old girl Hala, who has become the sole survivor and witness to the destruction of her family in its entirety.

Israeli warplanes also bombed an apartment belonging to the Al-Ghoul family, killing civilians and injuring others with varying wounds, in addition to another strike that targeted an apartment in the Abu Iskandar area, where two martyrs were reported and several others were injured as a result of the targeting of a residential apartment. This was followed by a direct strike involving three missiles targeting a civilian vehicle on Al-Quds Street in the same neighborhood, causing an additional number of injuries.

As part of the targeting of civilian objects and economic facilities, occupation aircraft struck a room inside the “Salim Fuel Station” near Al-Sha’biya Junction in central Gaza City, resulting in one martyr and several injuries, while the strike coincided with the passage of a police patrol that was present at the site.

As an extension of the policy of systematic destruction and terror, occupation forces expanded their aggression this evening by targeting the central governorate and the south of the Strip. Warplanes launched a strike that destroyed a house in the town of Az-Zawayda, opposite Abu Ubaida Mosque, which had been previously threatened with evacuation, causing widespread destruction around the target area and spreading panic among residents before they returned to the site after the evacuation warning had ended. This coincided with heavy gunfire from occupation military vehicles north of Al-Bureij camp, in addition to renewed intermittent artillery shelling targeting the eastern and northeastern areas of Khan Younis in the south of the Strip, in a clear insistence on continuing offensive military operations and targeting civilian property.

ICSPR condemns the timing of this systematic bloody escalation, which comes directly as the international community marks the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression on 4 June. The targeting of the Labad family and its children is glaring evidence of complete disregard for all international conventions, especially as documented official data indicate that the occupation has killed more than 21,000 children since the beginning of the genocidal war, in addition to injuring more than 44,000 other children and creating an entire generation of orphans after nearly 58,000 children lost one or both parents.

ICSPR further affirms that this escalation and intensification of raids and ongoing violations, which alone since the ceasefire agreement that took effect on 10 October 2025 have resulted in the killing of 936 Palestinians and the injury of 2,903 others, prove that the occupation is pursuing a systematic policy aimed at undermining the international protection system and ensuring continued impunity, taking advantage of the international community’s paralysis, the suffocating siege on Gaza, and the destruction of the healthcare system.

ICSPR stresses that the simultaneous and direct targeting of civilian apartments and inhabited homes without prior warning constitutes a grave, direct, and serious violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, especially the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, and rises to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

While holding the Israeli occupation authorities and the silent international system fully responsible for these massacres, ICSPR calls for the following:

1. It calls on the international community, the United Nations, the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions, and the mediators to act immediately to stop the genocidal war, impose an immediate, comprehensive, and effective halt to all military operations and occupation airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, and provide international protection for civilians.

2. It urges the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to include the Labad family massacre and the families in Gaza erased from the civil registry as urgent investigation files, in order to ensure that war criminals do not escape punishment.

3. It calls for immediate international intervention to allow the entry of aid, fuel, heavy equipment, and machinery to enable civil defense and ambulance crews to recover the bodies and victims trapped under the rubble in Gaza City.

4. It demands guaranteed entry of aid and fuel without restrictions, accountability for those responsible before the International Criminal Court, an end to the policies of forced displacement and the forcible re-engineering of population geography, and the adoption of deterrent measures to put an end to these ongoing crimes.

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR).