Palestinian Territory – More than 70 Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli massacre last November, the majority of whom were women, children, and elderly individuals who belonged to a single family, a new Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor investigation has revealed.

Published on Thursday, the Euro-Med Monitor report outlines that the massacre occurred during a large-scale military assault by the Israeli army on the Shaheibar family’s residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City. The attack, which took place over two days—17th and 18th November 2023—saw the use of aircraft and drones to target residential buildings, civilians inside their homes, and those attempting to bury relatives killed in earlier attacks.

Euro-Med Monitor was able to verify the identities of 61 victims, all from the Shaheibar family. The victims included 27 children, 16 women (three of whom were elderly), and 18 men, including two elderly men. Some victims’ identities remain unknown due to the severe fragmentation of their bodies.

The investigation details the massacre: at approximately 4:10 a.m. on Friday, 17th November 2023, the Israeli army launched an attack on Shaheibar Street, near Thalathini Street in Al-Sabra and adjacent to the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City. A five-storey residential building owned by Maher Shaheibar was struck by at least two missiles fired from warplanes, without prior warning. The first missile hit the fifth floor, and the second struck the third floor, completely destroying three residential floors and killing approximately 40 people. Around 20 others were injured inside the building at the time of the attack. Only a displaced family of ten, residing on the ground floor, survived the targeting.

According to eyewitnesses, approximately half an hour after the initial attack, an Israeli drone targeted a second nearby residential building consisting of four floors, owned by Muhyi Shaheibar. This building, located at the end of the street behind Maher Shaheibar’s house, was struck on the upper floor by at least one missile, killing a child and critically injuring his mother. Subsequently, the Israeli army targeted a third residential building owned by the head of the Shaheibar family, Nahid Shaheibar, near the start of the street. The top floor of this building was destroyed around the same time as the second attack, resulting in the death of a woman and the injury of 10 others. All these strikes were carried out without any prior warning.

Following the assault, Shaheibar family members in the area rushed to retrieve the victims from the rubble. Due to the intensity of the bombardment, some bodies were mutilated. Approximately 15 bodies were recovered and placed on the sidewalk near the building, while around 12 severely injured people were pulled from the targeted structure and taken to the nearby home of the elderly Amina Shaheibar, where the victims’ bodies had been laid. 

Around 6:00 a.m., residents attempted to transport some of the injured to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in their own vehicles, only to be met with Israeli tanks encircling the area, forcing them to turn back with the wounded.

Eventually, the injured individuals later died due to the lack of medical aid and the inability to reach a hospital.  

Between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m., Israeli military vehicles suddenly entered Shaheibar Street from Thalathini Street. Just before this incursion, Israeli airstrikes had targeted the fifth floor of a six-storey building also owned by the Shaheibar family (the home of Rafiq Shaheibar) on the same street. This attack killed a young girl and a woman, and injured several other women and children inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5wvcrXGlwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5wvcrXGlwc

Following this, the Israeli army carried out intensive, direct shelling on other residential buildings in the area, despite there being no combatants or exchanges of fire, according to survivors and eyewitnesses.

As soon as the ground incursion began, residents in the area hurried to seek shelter inside their homes, neighbouring houses, and backstreets, fearing they would be shot at by the military vehicles, leaving the bodies of the dead on the sidewalk outside elderly Amina Shaheibar’s house. When the Israeli military vehicles entered the street, they ran over the bodies on the sidewalk and repeatedly bulldozed them, reducing them to an unidentifiable mixture of flesh. Additionally, all cars and trucks in the street were destroyed or bulldozed, including around 30 transport trucks owned by the Shaheibar family.

When the military vehicles reached the end of Shaheibar Street, they bulldozed an area filled with trees and stationed there. They then fired directly and intensively at residential buildings where residents and displaced civilians, mostly women and children, had sought shelter, resulting in more deaths and injuries.

Notably, on the day of the attack, there was an almost complete communication blackout in Gaza due to fuel shortages resulting from Israel’s blockade on fuel entry into the Strip. At that time, the Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel announced that “all backup power sources for operating main network elements had been depleted,” leading to a shutdown of landline, mobile, and internet services. This outage, compounded by the siege on the area, prevented residents from contacting civil defence to transport and rescue the wounded, contributing to the deaths of many.

Amer Ghanem Mousa Shaheibar, 61, a resident of Shaheibar Street and a relative of the massacre victims who survived, recounted to the Euro-Med Monitor team: “I was asleep at home when suddenly the first missile struck my cousin Maher Taleb Shaheibar’s house (66). My sister Huda Ghanem Shaheibar (57), my nieces Fidaa Moen Shaheibar (32) and Ghaliya Moen Shaheibar (17), her son Mohamed Moen Shaheibar (29), and Fidaa’s children Maher Mehran Maher Shaheibar (12), Ritaj Mehran Maher Shaheibar (11), and the young girls Roua Mehran Maher Shaheibar and Masa Mehran Maher Shaheibar were all living there. The first missile hit the fifth floor. Then a second missile hit the third floor while I was standing at my doorway, and the force of the strike pushed us about four metres back inside the house.”

He added, “We ran towards the house and found bodies and body parts inside. The people on the lower floor had survived. We found about 40 victims and began gathering the bodies, placing them outside until it was around 6:30–7:00 a.m. Suddenly, tanks entered the street. I kept running back and forth, moving bodies to the sidewalk. Then the tanks and vehicles started crushing the cars and trucks owned by my cousins from the Shaheibar family. So, my cousins and I, about five to seven people, retreated to a back street and waited there until morning. When dawn broke, we returned and found the bodies crushed and bulldozed by Israeli vehicles. We began gathering the remains from different locations. I called my relatives, and they brought carts pulled by animals. We wrapped the bodies that had been crushed by the tanks in blankets and began burying them in the nearby cemetery, where the army had bulldozed the trees. As we were burying them, Israeli drones fired at us. But we kept going until we finished.”

Around 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 17, 2023, as residents were receiving news that Israeli forces were withdrawing south toward the Zaytoun neighbourhood, they were suddenly hit by an airstrike targeting a three-storey residential building belonging to Said Ismail Shaheibar. The aircraft destroyed nearly half of the building, severely damaging the first and second floors. This building is located a little further inside from Shaheibar Street, separated from it by a gate, and situated among a cluster of residential buildings.

Around 200 people from nearby homes sought refuge in the building during the Israeli military incursion. Some were on the ground floor and outside the building when it was struck, resulting in the deaths of at least four people, including three children and an elderly woman, and injuries to at least 10 others. Two of the children were killed instantly, while the third child and the elderly woman died hours later, as evacuating them to hospitals was impossible due to the ongoing siege. After the building (Said Shaheibar’s house) was targeted, the casualties and injured were moved to a nearby residential building where some families had taken shelter, alongside the bodies of their loved ones.

The following day, on 18 November 2023, around 6:00 a.m., several residents ventured through the gate back toward Shaheibar Street to return to their homes after hearing of the army’s withdrawal. Some began helping to retrieve the bodies from the previous day’s massacre and prepare them for burial. While some residents gathered outside their homes in the street to assist with the burials, an Israeli drone fired at least two missiles directly at them, killing approximately 20 people, including several children, and injuring a similar number with varying degrees of wounds. The bodies of some victims were torn apart due to the direct missile strikes.

The residents then waited for about an hour and a half, and after confirming that the Israeli forces had fully withdrawn south toward the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, they began collecting the bodies and remains of the victims from that day and the previous day, burying them in the “al-Bariya” area, where trees had once stood before being razed by the army. Despite the risks involved, the residents completed the burials, laying around 60 bodies to rest, including both intact bodies and body parts crushed by the Israeli military vehicles as they entered the street the previous day.

As part of its investigation into the massacre over the past months, the Euro-Med Monitor field team visited Shaheibar Street—near Al-Thalathini Street in the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City—multiple times to assess and document the extensive destruction caused by the attack in the area. During these visits, the team conducted interviews with nine eyewitnesses, including relatives of the victims and survivors of the massacre who still reside in the neighbourhood.

Additionally, the team analysed videos and photos documenting the crime scene during and after the attack, as well as satellite images showing changes and damage in the area. They identified the targeted buildings, the razed land, and the mass grave site for the victims. The team also pinpointed locations where Israeli forces had gathered in the area on the day of the attack, providing a comprehensive view of the execution, impact, and scale of the destruction.

Based on witness interviews and other sources, Euro-Med Monitor estimates, that around 3,000 people were present in the area at the time of the attack, the majority of whom belonged to the Shaheibar family. This estimate includes residents of the area as well as displaced individuals who had sought refuge there.

Euro-Med Monitor’s investigation into this massacre found no evidence of any military targets in the targeted area at the time of the attack or before it, whether military installations or armed individuals. Therefore, this attack appears to have lacked any military necessity, and it unequivocally violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions that Israel is obligated to respect at all times and in every attack, without exception.

During the attack, the Israeli forces used aircraft and drones to launch high-impact, destructive missiles directly at civilians and residential buildings without prior warning. This assault not only disfigured the bodies of the victims and violated their dignity, but also involved a sudden ground incursion with heavy machinery into a densely populated residential area. Furthermore, the imposition of an arbitrary siege on the entire area prevented residents from evacuating to save their lives or even providing aid to the wounded, leading to even more fatalities.

The Israeli military attack on the Shaheibar family can only be classified as a deliberate and direct attack, an indiscriminate assault, or an excessive use of force—all of which constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute. Furthermore, this attack amounts to a full-fledged crime against humanity committed by the Israeli occupation forces against a group of civilians. It was carried out as part of a large-scale and systematic military offensive targeting the civilian population in Gaza for over a year.

Based on the aforementioned information, as well as the Israeli occupation army’s repeated violations of international law through the targeting of civilians—resulting in deaths and injuries—and the destruction of residential neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, an immediate, independent, and impartial international investigation into the circumstances surrounding the targeting of civilians on Shaheibar Street, as well as all other crimes committed by Israel against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, is essential. Furthermore, pressure must be exerted on Israel to permit the entry of international and UN investigation and inquiry committees into Gaza, in full compliance with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice.

The international community must fulfill its legal and moral obligations to use all available means to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Stopping and punishing the perpetrators of these crimes is a non-negotiable legal obligation for all states, without exception.

Israel must be subjected to political and economic sanctions, including a complete prohibition on the sale and export of weapons to it, an immediate halt to all military and intelligence assistance, and the suspension of all arms import and export licenses and agreements—especially those concerning dual-use materials and technologies that may be used against the Palestinian people.

All crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, including the Shaheibar Street massacre and the hundreds of other massacres carried out by the Israeli military, must be investigated by the International Criminal Court. The investigation should be expanded to include individual criminal responsibility for these crimes, and arrest warrants must be expedited. Given that the crimes committed by Israel in Gaza fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the Court must acknowledge the reality of the situation and address these crimes as genocide, with the seriousness and impartiality they demand.

Every state must assist the International Criminal Court in its ongoing investigations by submitting specialized factual and legal memoranda regarding Israel’s crimes, refraining from obstructing the Court’s ability to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials responsible for international crimes, supporting the enforcement of these warrants, and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.

States must also formally support the International Court of Justice’s examination of the case filed by South Africa against Israel, accusing it of violating the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide by conducting military operations in and against Gaza and its Palestinian population since October 7, 2023.

To ensure that no one involved in these crimes escapes legal accountability, it is crucial to hold the countries complicit in Israel’s actions accountable, particularly for the crime of genocide. This includes holding accountable the individuals in these countries who enabled these crimes, considering them accomplices and partners in the crimes committed in Gaza, including the Shaheibar family massacre. The principle of universal jurisdiction should be invoked to prosecute perpetrators, regardless of their nationality or the location of the crimes.

At the international, regional, and local levels, all avenues for accountability must be pursued, including cooperative efforts to use universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators to justice before national courts in countries that accept this jurisdiction.

Finally, there must be justice and compensation for Palestinian victims and their families. In accordance with international law, reparations should be provided for the harm caused by Israel’s egregious crimes and violations.

To read the full investigation, click here