Civil defence rescuers in the blockaded territory said the Al-Tabieen school in Gaza City was struck on Saturday as displaced Palestinians sheltering there gathered for dawn prayers.

"There are 93 dead in the Al-Tabieen school strike, 75 of them have been identified," Gaza Civil Defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Monday.

"The others have not yet been identified because some bodies are torn and charred by the bombardment."

He said the dead included 11 children and six women.

Amjad Aliwa, an emergency doctor at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, confirmed that 75 people killed in the strike had been identified.

"There are still bodies (whose identities are unknown) that are completely destroyed," he told AFP.

"There are also some families who have been displaced to the south (of the Gaza Strip) and cannot come to identify their loved ones."

Hamas has refuted Israel’s claims that the school in Gaza City was being used as a command centre for the group, accusing Israel of fabricating excuses to justify its crimes.

"We confirm that none of those who were martyred in today's massacre were armed. All were civilians targeted while performing the Fajr prayer, including children, civilian employees, university professors, and religious figures, most of whom have no involvement in any political or military activities," Hamas' statement added.

Palestinians face systematic abuse and torture in Israeli prisons

The Geneva Conventions, with roots dating to the 19th century, aim to set rules around the conduct of war: they ban torture and sexual violence, require humane treatment of detainees and mandate searches for missing persons.

The anniversary of the Geneva Convention coincides with a leaked video from an Israeli detention camp, which shows the rape of a Palestinian prisoner. This incident has intensified existing accusations of sexual abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees.

The video, aired by Israel's Channel 12 broadcaster on Wednesday, documents Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian man at Israel’s Sde Teiman, a secret imprisonment camp in the Negev desert set up after 7 October where hundreds of people from Gaza have been held.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are facing systematic abuse and torture in Israeli jails, according to a report released by an Israeli human rights group.

Testimonies from 55 ex-detainees revealed "inhuman conditions", according to the report by B'Tselem, which said more than a dozen prison facilities were being used as "de facto torture camps".

"The testimonies clearly indicated a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel," the report said.

Rulebook of war ignored
 

The Conventions, which nearly all the world's countries have adopted since they were finalized on Aug. 12, 1949, are back on their heels as national forces and armed groups regularly disregard the rules of war.

“International humanitarian law is under strain, disregarded, undermined to justify violence,” President Mirjana Spoljaric of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversees the conventions, said Monday.

“The world must recommit to this robust protective framework for armed conflict, one that follows the premise of protecting life instead of justifying death,” she said.

The conventions “reflect a global consensus that all wars have limits,” Spoljaric told reporters at ICRC headquarters in Geneva. “The dehumanization of both enemy fighters and civilian populations is a path to ruin and disaster.”

The Red Cross says the conventions are needed now more than ever: It has counted more than 120 active conflicts around the world, a six-fold increase from the half-century anniversary in 1999.

These days, many countries and combatants exploit loopholes in international humanitarian law or interpret it as they see fit. Hospitals, schools and ambulances have come under fire, aid workers and civilians are killed, and countries refuse access to detainees.

Israel’s Supreme Court, the only entity capable of interpreting international law in Israel, in 2006, issued a ruling that assessed the legality of the Israeli government’s policy of “targeted killings” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The court determined that a state of continuous armed conflict exists between Israel and various Palestinian groups, making the law of international armed conflict applicable.

Israel continuously claims to be conducting such "targeted killings," before killing scores of civilians in Gaza as collateral damage. 

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese emphasized in an interview with Ahram Online the intentional Israeli genocide in Gaza with the support of Western weapons, stressing the need to impose sanctions on Israel. 

Israel's war on Gaza has so far killed at least 39,897 people, mostly women and children.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online