The United Nations human rights chief has warned that Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip “amounts to a war crime” as the Tel Aviv regime continues its deadly bombing campaign on the besieged enclave.

After a Wednesday visit to the Rafah crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and Gaza, Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Israeli bombardments in Gaza have killed, maimed and injured in particular women and children.

“The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” Turk said, according to Press TV.

Turk further said, warning, “We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue.”

According to figures released on Thursday, 10,966 Palestinians have so far been killed and over 28,500 been injured.

The war on the Gaza Strip started after the Hamas resistance movement waged a surprise attack inside the occupied territories bordering Gaza on October 7 in response to Israel's decades-long crimes against Palestinians. The military operation, called “Al-Aqsa Storm”, shocked the Israeli regime which suffered from the illusion that it is invincible.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the UN human rights chief demanded respect for international human rights laws, noting that “parties to the conflict have the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects.”

“Attacks against medical facilities, medical personnel and the wounded and sick are prohibited,” Turk stressed, warning that there is an “urgent humanitarian imperative to reach the population increasingly isolated” in Gaza.

Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in Gaza City was attacked twice on Thursday, forcing the hospital to almost fully stop operating, Al Jazeera reported.

“Living nightmare”

According to officials in the Gaza Strip, the occupying regime’s aggression has so far destroyed 70 percent of the coastal sliver’s electricity grid.

Israel’s airstrikes, missile attacks and shelling not only destroy hospitals, homes, and houses of worship, but also cut off fuel, electricity and water supplies.

“Blackouts have serious consequences on rescue workers struggling to find and rescue the victims of strikes, families trying to find out the status of their loved ones and to access emergency medical care, and for the situation on the ground to be monitored and documented,” Turk stressed.

The Rafah crossing, according to Turk, is a “lifeline” for 2.3 million inhabitants of the tightly-blockaded Gaza Strip. Although a trickle of aid trucks has been allowed in recently, they are just a fraction of the aid that used to be allowed.

“The lifeline has been unjustly, outrageously thin. In Rafah, I have witnessed the gates to a living nightmare,” the top UN human rights official said.

In this nightmare, “people have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel. My colleagues are among those trapped, and among those who have lost family members, suffering sleepless nights filled with agony, anguish and despair,” Turk lamented.

He also strongly called for a ceasefire to end the Israeli raids.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war was turning the Gaza Strip into “a graveyard for children.”

The UN chief said clear violations of international humanitarian law were being committed during the war, adding that the Israeli regime was simultaneously targeting “civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and UN facilities – including shelters. No one is safe.”