ICSPR Targeting Families, Medical Facilities, and Crimes of Destruction and Starvation Must Be Met with International Intervention in Light of the Humanitarian Danger Facing Gaza’s Residents
Date: 28 September 2025
Press Release
ICSPR Targeting Families, Medical Facilities, and Crimes of Destruction and Starvation Must Be Met with International Intervention in Light of the Humanitarian Danger Facing Gaza’s Residents
The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) follows with grave concern the continuation of the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, now in its 723rd day. Daily massacres are intensifying, and the policies of killing, starvation, and destruction are converging to form a mixture of international crimes threatening human and civilizational existence in Gaza. The Israeli occupation army continues to commit massacres against unarmed civilians by bombing densely populated residential neighborhoods and destroying towers and civilian facilities, the latest of which was the destruction of the “Italian Tower” in Al-Nasr neighborhood in Gaza City, alongside the targeting of the Medical Relief building and clinic in Tel Al-Hawa, which led to the suspension of vital humanitarian services for thousands of patients and the wounded. The occupation also continues bombing schools sheltering displaced people, refugee tents, and civilian homes in the neighborhoods of Al-Sabra, Sheikh Radwan, Tel Al-Hawa, Sheikh Ajlin, and Al-Shati, using warplanes, artillery, robots, and booby-trapped vehicles packed with tons of explosives placed inside crowded neighborhoods. This caused the destruction of thousands of homes and shelters.
ICSPR has monitored the expansion of Israeli ground operations inside Gaza City, with large parts of vital neighborhoods (including Tel Al-Hawa, Sheikh Radwan, Al-Nasr, southern Al-Sabra, and northern Al-Shati Camp) occupied over Friday and Saturday (26–27 September 2025). Israeli crimes resulted in the killing of more than 175 martyrs and the injury of more than 540 others with varying wounds, including large numbers of children, women, elderly, journalists, and displaced people. These are preliminary figures likely to rise as many civilians remain under the rubble of destroyed homes, while civil defense teams are unable to reach them due to repeated Israeli obstruction, prevention of ambulances, and the lack of equipment to retrieve bodies and evacuate the wounded.
ICSPR documented a series of massacres committed by the occupation against Palestinian families who refused its extortion attempts to trade their lives and stay in Gaza City in exchange for security cooperation. Families rejected such blackmail, and the occupation responded with intensive bombardment and mass killings, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law. Among the victims were 9 members of the Bakr family in Al-Shati Camp whose homes were destroyed, forcing them into displacement; dozens from the Dughmush and Diraoui families killed after heavy targeting of their residential neighborhoods; the Banna family, sheltering three displaced families, wiped out; the Sharafa family, which lost 11 members; and in central Gaza, 9 members of the Jamal family in Al-Nuseirat, including children, women, and Dr. Khaled Aslan, along with four others including two children north of Nuseirat. In the south, dozens of martyrs from the Abu Urmana, Qdeih, Sheikh Al-Eid, Hijazi, and Fseifes families were received at Nasser Medical Complex, in addition to the killing of the child Jana Abu Karsh and her mother, and citizens Abdel-Hai Naif Awad in Al-Amal neighborhood and Mohammed Al-Bisheeti near Atayaf Chalets northwest of Khan Younis.
ICSPR also documented the killing of 34 civilians and the injury of 157 others during Friday and Saturday as they tried to obtain aid at U.S.- and Israeli-run distribution centers, raising the total to 2,560 martyrs and more than 18,703 injuries among those targeted while seeking food and water. This highlights the systematic policy of targeting aid-seekers as Gaza enters a stage of full famine. Deaths from hunger, thirst, and disease continue, most recently the death of 11-month-old infant Aysil Abu Al-Arja due to malnutrition and lack of medicine, raising the death toll from starvation to nearly 500 cases. Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced that since the beginning of the genocidal war, the toll has risen to 65,926 martyrs and 167,783 injuries, including tens of thousands of children and women. An additional 300 martyrs were officially recorded after their data was completed by the judicial committee on missing persons.
ICSPR has documented deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, including the shutdown of relief institutions after their headquarters in Gaza City were destroyed. The ground invasion has forced the closure of four hospitals since early September, with Jerusalem Hospital and the Jordanian field hospital suspending services. Hospitals are suffering from depletion of blood units and lab supplies, leading to the suspension of many surgeries. More than 15,000 patients and wounded require urgent medical evacuation amid a total collapse of health services, compounded by the suspension of most international humanitarian organizations’ operations. “Doctors Without Borders” announced the suspension of its work in Gaza City, deepening the suffering of civilians stripped of essential medical and humanitarian protections. These crimes against the health sector coincide with the total prevention of sufficient food, medicine, and fuel from entering northern Gaza and Gaza City. Severe thirst, the shutdown of most water wells, and the collapse of sewage and sanitation services due to fuel shortages threaten epidemic outbreaks and a compounded famine. Hundreds of thousands of civilians now sleep in streets and sidewalks without shelter, food, or drinking water, in an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people in central and southern Gaza, especially Al-Mawasi, are living in catastrophic conditions. With no safe spaces or adequate tents, families are forced to build makeshift shelters between waste sites and roads. Thousands more remain in the streets with no tents due to border closures and obstruction of humanitarian aid, worsening their suffering and threatening the spread of disease and epidemics.
ICSPR strongly condemns the deliberate targeting of journalists. Journalist Mohammad Al-Dayya was martyred after his tent near Al-Anan Stadium in central Deir Al-Balah was bombed, raising the number of journalist martyrs to 251 since the beginning of the aggression. This constitutes an attempt to kill witnesses, silence the truth, and suppress the Palestinian narrative. The crime coincides with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Journalist, this year marked by genocide against the profession and its practitioners. This requires urgent international action to provide protection for civilians and Palestinian journalists.
ICSPR commends the withdrawal of diplomatic delegations during war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly and the boycott of his lies that attempted to justify genocide, deflecting blame onto the victims and ignoring the overwhelming evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Commission condemns the Israeli army’s broadcasting of Netanyahu’s speech through loudspeakers across Gaza, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda tactics, as well as its hacking of thousands of civilians’ phones in a war crime involving technological warfare, privacy violations, and surveillance. These actions increase the responsibility of the international community to expose such disinformation, isolate Israel, boycott it, and prosecute its leaders for genocide and war crimes, alongside plans to expel Gaza’s population, annex the West Bank, and Judaize Jerusalem in pursuit of the “Greater Israel” project.
ICSPR values the growing popular movements worldwide and the global momentum Palestine gained at the UN General Assembly in world leaders’ speeches. It calls for this to be translated into concrete measures—imposing sanctions on Israel, boycotting it, and prosecuting it and its partners. ICSPR welcomes the UN’s addition of 58 new companies to the blacklist of genocide enablers, and hails the decision by Microsoft to suspend services exploited by Israeli military units for surveillance of Palestinians—an act of technological crime adding to the field genocide. ICSPR urges investigation and accountability for such criminal uses of technology.
The Commission further welcomes the Spanish and Italian decisions to send warships to protect the “Freedom Flotilla,” which has faced repeated Israeli attacks and threats, and applauds the Hague Group (34 states led by South Africa and Colombia) for its action plan to stop genocide, including arms bans, boycotts of Israeli companies, energy export cuts, and support for prosecuting Israeli leaders and partners. ICSPR calls on all free nations to join this group to form an international humanitarian coalition to end Israel’s crimes.
ICSPR also strongly welcomes the initiative of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, calling to activate the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism and form an international humanitarian coalition capable of enforcing corridors and protecting civilians to end starvation. The Commission affirms that every day without effective international intervention adds more names to the lists of victims and wounded. Protecting Palestinian civilians and stopping genocide is not only a moral choice but a legal obligation and humanitarian duty on the international community.
Therefore, ICSPR calls on the free peoples of the world to escalate popular movements up to civil disobedience, pressuring the international community, the UN, and its member states to fulfill their moral and legal responsibilities to end the genocide—whether individually or collectively—by activating the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, convening an emergency General Assembly session to adopt a mechanism for international protection, and deploying international protection forces to protect civilians. This must be part of an international humanitarian coalition to enforce a permanent and immediate ceasefire, open humanitarian corridors, allow the entry of food, medicine, fuel, and blood units in sufficient quantities, guarantee the work of international organizations, break the blockade, and enable reconstruction and recovery. ICSPR further calls to impose sanctions on Israel, prosecute its leaders before international courts, support a serious path to end the occupation, dismantle the colonial apartheid system, establish the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, and ensure the return of refugees.
