ISTANBUL

At least 150 Palestinian children were killed in renewed Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a Geneva-based rights group said.

The Israeli army pounded the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing at least 404 people, injuring hundreds, and breaking a ceasefire agreement that took effect on Jan. 19.

Images emerging from Gaza showed that the majority of the victims were civilians, including women and children, whose homes were bombed during the night.

“The intentional killing of large numbers of people was evident in the Israeli attacks,” the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement.

“Any attempt to disguise these crimes as security concerns or military necessities is nothing more than blatant deception meant to conceal the crime of genocide,” it added.

The rights group said the international community's inaction regarding “Israel's heinous crimes” in Gaza over the past 18 months “is not only a disgraceful failure but also a de facto endorsement of further massacres and genocide.”

“No matter what excuses Israel may offer, the systematic patterns of mass murder, continuous forced starvation, deliberate deprivation of essential survival resources, and the complete destruction of Gaza's infrastructure are unequivocally unacceptable,” it said.

“Under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, these acts are considered genocide and are classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The Euro-Med Monitor called for imposing economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel, banning the export and import of weapons, halting military cooperation with it, freezing the financial assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements.

More than 48,500 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and over 112,000 others injured in a brutal Israeli military campaign in Gaza since October 2023.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.