Norway: NGO says Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ attacks against children, women are ‘war crimes’

Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks” on Palestinian children and women are “clearly war crimes,” the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said on X.

“It is obscene to continue waging war through refugee camps,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the NGO, said on X. “Even if Hamas committed the war crime of hiding fighters among displaced civilians, these continued, indiscriminate attacks killing scores of children and women are clearly Israeli war crimes.”

Egeland’s comments came after at least 39 displaced Palestinians were killed on Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, Anadolu has reported.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas, in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Nearly 36,600 Palestinians have since been killed by Israel in Gaza, the vast majority of them women and children, and over 83,000 others have been wounded. Nearly eight months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza are in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling has ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded by Israeli forces on 6 May. The occupation state not only denies the genocide charge, but has also ignored the court’s rulings.

READ: Spain to join South Africa’s ICJ genocide case