The Palestinian Center for Missing and Enforced Disappeared Persons (PCMD) warned of the risk of further cases of enforced disappearance, following the announcement by the Israeli occupation forces of their incursion into new areas of the Gaza Strip and the resumption of their war of extermination.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the center expressed its deep concern over the increasing number of missing persons in the Gaza Strip as Israeli bombardment continues, with more residential buildings and facilities collapsing on the heads of their residents, and with civil defense teams unable to reach potential victims and retrieve them from under the rubble.
The center stated that the Israeli occupation forces’ threat to expand ground operations “increases the likelihood of Palestinian civilians being detained in unknown locations without revealing their fate, which constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law.”
The center reiterated its call for independent investigations into the crimes of enforced disappearance and the ongoing violations committed by the occupation against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. It demanded that the Israeli occupation authorities be compelled to reveal the fate of those disappeared in its prisons and to reveal the identities of those killed or others whose bodies are being held or buried in the “cemeteries of numbers” or in unmarked temporary graves.
