Israel-Hamas War: Suspicious Gaza Cemetery Demolished By Israel Military

 Israel military operation have reportedly destroyed a Gaza cemetery as they claimed Hamas used the site to hide a tunnel. 

The Islamic cemetery in southern Gaza was demolished, graves excised from the earth. A skull with no teeth rested atop the sandy, churned rubble.

The neighborhood of Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, which soldiers showed foreign journalists Saturday, was obliterated, transformed by the military’s search for underground Hamas tunnels.

An Associated Press journalist saw a destroyed mosque and — where the cemetery had once been – a 140-meter-(yard)-wide pit that gave way to what the army called a Hamas attack tunnel underneath.

The military said Monday that combat engineers had demolished part of the network, releasing a video showing massive explosions in the area.

As Israel moves forward with a ground and air campaign in Gaza that health officials in the besieged enclave say has claimed over 26,000 Palestinian lives, the military’s destruction of holy sites has drawn staunch criticism from Palestinians and rights groups, who say the offensive is also an assault on cultural heritage. Under international law, cemeteries and religious sites receive special protection — and destroying them could be considered a war crime.

Israel says Hamas uses such sites as military cover, removing them of these protections.

It says there is no way to accomplish its military goal of defeating Hamas without finding the tunnels, where they say the militants have built command and control centers, transported weapons and hidden some of the 130 hostages it is believed to be holding.

They say digging up the tunnels involves unavoidable collateral damage to sacrosanct spaces.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive on Gaza has displaced most of the 2.3 million population.

According to a U.N. monitor, the military has damaged 161 mosques in the course of its operations. The agency said it has not tracked the number of cemeteries that were damaged.