An investigation by a special UN commission has declared that Israel perpetrated acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip through the systematic destruction of reproductive healthcare facilities during its bloody onslaught on the territory.

The report released Thursday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East al-Quds, and Israel outlines a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys since October 7, 2023. 

"Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention," it said.

The inquiry found that Israel engaged in at least two of the five acts classified as genocide by the UN Convention.

Those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said.

Israel, it said, is “deliberately inflicting conditions of life on the group (Palestinians) calculated to bring about its physical destruction and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group".

“These violations not only caused severe direct physical and psychological harm to women and girls, but also had long-term, irreversible consequences for the psychological and reproductive health and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a whole,” Navi Pillay, chair of the committee, said in a statement.

The inquiry found that Israel conducted systematic assaults aimed at Gaza's healthcare facilities, specifically hospitals and clinics that offer reproductive health services.

This resulted in the almost complete collapse of the health sector's capacity to provide care for pregnant women and newborns, it said.

The investigation underlined that “severe restrictions on essential medical supplies and medicines exacerbated the deteriorating reproductive health of women and girls in Gaza, directly contributing to high maternal and newborn mortality rates.”

The report also condemned Israeli forces over using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the Hamas-led surprise and large-scale attack against the Zionist entity in October 2023. 

(Source: Press TV)