The bodies were examined at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where the Palestinian Health Ministry said documentation found inside each body bag showed they came from Sde Teiman, a military base in the Negev desert that serves both as a storage facility for bodies taken from Gaza and as a prison camp.
“The document tags inside the body bags are written in Hebrew and clearly indicate that the remains were held at Sde Teiman,” said Dr Munir al-Bursh, the ministry’s director general. “The tags also showed that DNA tests had been carried out on some of them there.”
Sde Teiman has long been under scrutiny for alleged abuse. Last year, The Guardian published photos and testimonies describing how “Palestinian detainees were held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to hospital beds and forced to wear nappies.”
Following the deaths of 36 Palestinians detained at the site, the Israeli army opened a criminal investigation that remains unresolved.
As part of the US-proposed and Egypt-Turkey-Qatar-brokered truce in Gaza, Hamas has handed over 13 bodies of captives who died during Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, which began on 7 October 2023. Israel has so far transferred the bodies of 150 Palestinians killed during the war.
According to The Guardian, some photographs of the Palestinian bodies show victims who were blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs, and one man with a rope fastened around his neck. Due to their graphic nature, the photos were not published.
Doctors in Khan Younis told the newspaper that examinations “clearly indicate that Israel carried out acts of murder, summary executions and systematic torture against many of the Palestinians.”
Documented findings included “clear signs of direct gunfire at point-blank range and bodies crushed beneath Israeli tank tracks.”
Eyad Barhoum, administrative director of Nasser Medical Complex, said the bodies “carried no names but just codes,” with identification efforts now underway.
While there is substantial evidence that many of the Palestinians had been executed, it remains difficult to determine where the killings took place, The Guardian noted.
Human rights activists are demanding an investigation to determine how many detainees may have been killed at Sde Teiman.
Palestinian doctors said the condition of the bodies, many blindfolded and bound, suggests they were tortured and executed during detention. Israeli media and whistleblower accounts have reported that around 1,500 bodies from Gaza are currently held at the site.
One Israeli medical whistleblower told The Guardian: “I did witness a patient from Gaza being brought with a gunshot wound to the left chest. He was also blindfolded and handcuffed, naked as he arrived at the emergency department. Another patient, with a right-leg gunshot wound, also arrived at my hospital in similar conditions.”
Another whistleblower previously said all patients brought from Gaza were “handcuffed to the beds, dressed in nappies and blindfolded.” He added, “These were patients who had been captured by the Israeli army while being treated in Gaza hospitals. They had limbs and infected wounds. They were moaning in pain.”
According to him, the army offered no proof that detainees were affiliated with Hamas, with several captives repeatedly asking why they were being held.
Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR), said that “The signs of torture and abuse found on the bodies of Palestinians recently returned by Israel to Gaza are horrifying—yet, sadly, not surprising. These findings corroborate what PHR has exposed over the past two years about conditions inside Israeli detention facilities, particularly at Sde Teiman.”
“The unprecedented number of Palestinians who have died in Israeli custody, together with verified evidence of deaths resulting from torture and medical neglect, and now the findings on the returned bodies, leave no doubt: an independent international investigation is urgently needed,” the group said.
The Guardian also consulted an Israeli doctor who had witnessed the treatment of prisoners at the Sde Teiman field hospital.
Speaking anonymously, he said one photo “shows the man had his hands tied, likely with zip ties. There is a change in colour between the arms and the hands at the level of the zip ties, likely indicating ischemic changes due to excessive restraints.”
“This might be someone who was either injured and captured (thus died under Israeli custody) or someone who died due to injuries inflicted after his capture,” the physician said.
According to the United Nations, at least 75 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since the outbreak of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
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