Dr. Munir al-Boursh, director of the Gaza Ministry of Health and spokesperson for Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the Guardian that documents found inside the body bag showed that all the bodies were those of Sudeh Tayman, Al-Mayadeen TV’s English website reported. The site has long been associated with serious human rights abuses, having previously been exposed for holding Palestinian detainees in cages, blindfolding, handcuffing, shackling them to hospital beds and forcing them to wear diapers.
“The document tag inside the body bag is written in Hebrew, clearly indicating that the body was kept in Sde Teyman,” al-Bash said. “The tags also indicated that DNA tests were conducted on some people there.”
Israel is said to be conducting an ongoing criminal investigation into the deaths of 36 Palestinians detained at the same facility.
As part of the US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas handed over the bodies of several prisoners of war who died during the war, while Israel has so far returned the bodies of 150 Palestinians.
Images of Palestinian victims reviewed by the Guardian are too graphic to publish, but several of the dead are blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs and one with a rope around his neck.
Khan Yunis doctors who examined the bodies said both the autopsy and field observations “clearly demonstrate that Israel committed acts of murder, summary executions, and systematic torture against many Palestinians.” Health authorities reported “clear signs of direct gunfire at close range and the bodies were crushed under the tracks of Israeli tanks.”
Eyad Barhoum, director of the Nasser medical complex, said the body arrived “without a name, only with a code,” adding that the process of identifying the body had begun.
Evidence strongly suggests that many Palestinians were executed. Sde Teyman is a notorious detention center for deaths in custody, as well as serving as a storage site for bodies abducted from Gaza. Human rights groups are calling for an investigation into how many victims died at the facility.
MNA